BRASILIA (dpa-AFX) - The Department of Homeland Security has announced the arrest of visiting Harvard Law School professor Carlos Portugal Gouvea, whose temporary non-immigrant (J-1) visa was revoked following an anti-Semitic shooting incident in October.
Police in Brookline, Massachusetts, arrested Gouvea after he fired a BB gun outside the Temple Beth Zion synagogue on October 1, the day before the Jewish holyday Yom Kippur.
A police report quotes Gouvea as saying that he was 'hunting rats.'
But the police classified it as an anti-Semitic shooting incident.
On October 16, the Department of State revoked the visa of Gouvea, a citizen of Brazil.
On November 13, Gouvea accepted a plea deal on the charge of illegal use of the air rifle while his other charges for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and vandalizing property were dismissed.
Following his guilty plea, ICE Boston Enforcement and Removal Operations arrested Gouvea on Wednesday, and he agreed to voluntarily depart the United States rather than be deported.
'It is a privilege to work and study in the United States, not a right. There is no room in the United States for brazen, violent acts of anti-Semitism like this. They are an affront to our core principals as a country and an unacceptable threat against law-abiding American citizens,' said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. 'We are under zero obligation to admit foreigners who commit these inexplicably reprehensible acts or to let them stay here.
Carlos Gouvea is an Associate Professor at the University of Sao Paulo Law School in Brazil. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Law Institute, a leading think tank on environmental and social justice in Brazil.
A human rights activist, he is currently a board member of several Brazilian companies and non-profit and governmental organizations.
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