US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, in December over a shooting scare. The original incident report dates back to October.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security’s statement, the Brazilian citizen was charged with discharging a pellet gun outside a Massachusetts synagogue the day before Yom Kippur, which is the Jewish Day of Atonement.
He has now decided to voluntarily depart from the United States instead of facing deportation, as per the DHS. Officials also have since revoked his US visa as well. Notably, the Trump administration and local authorities’ takes on the matter don’t quite match with each other.
Harvard professor’s visa revoked over shooting scare – What happened
Gouvea’s arrest this month came after US authorities revoked his temporary nonimmigrant J-1 visa over what the Donald Trump administration called an “anti-semitic shooting incident” in a DHS announcement.
According to a police report cited by multiple international news outlets, Massachusetts officials took the Harvard professor into custody after the emergence of an October 1 report pointing towards a person with a gun near the Temple Beth Zion. Contrary to the accusations of the Trump administration, the report in question cited authorities saying that Gouvea was using a pellet gun to hunt rats nearby.
Brookline police and the Temple Beth Zion shared a common view that the pellet gun report did not seem to have been fuelled by antisemitism. A settled deal in the case involving Gouvea being charged for illegally discharging a pellet gun sentenced him to serving six months of pre-trial probation. He was also demanded to pay $386.59 in restitution.
On the other hand, multiple charges like disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and vandalism were dismissed as part of a November 14 plea agreement, as per the Harvard Crimson.
According to the university newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, the temple further opened up about police informing it via an email that Gouvea was “unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue or that it was a religious holiday.”
Who is Carlos Portugal Gouvea?
He is an associate professor at Sao Paulo Law School, and taught at Harvard for the fall semester, as per the DHS.
The Harvard Law School placed him on an administrative leave days after the shooting. It remains unclear whether Gouvea was reinstated at a later stage.
