BOSTON — The ICE agents who arrested a Milford High School student over the weekend were looking for the teen’s father, a detail that emerged Monday as students at the town’s high school walked out of class in protest of the federal arrest.

Marcelo Gomes, an 18-year-old honors student and member of the school’s volleyball team and band, was apprehended by ICE agents on Saturday while driving to practice in his father’s car. The teen was not the subject of their search, immigration officials said. The father is still at large.

“His dad hasn’t turned himself in,” according to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, who added they sought the father based on “law enforcement” intel and both the teen and dad are in the country illegally.

The teen “was not the target of the investigation, but like we have repeatedly said, sanctuary policies put us in a position to go out into communities and look for people,” Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia Hyde said Monday.

Hyde said that cities and states that don’t hold people in custody following an ICE detention request — as is the case in Massachusetts — make it so ICE agents have to go into neighborhoods and workplaces to find people subject to removal orders.

When they do that, she said, sometimes they find other people who would not have been caught by immigration officials had agents not been forced into the field.

“Unfortunately, we had to go to Milford to look for someone else, and we came across (Gomes) and he was arrested,” Hyde said.

According to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Gomes’ father entered the country illegally more than a decade ago and brought his young son here under the same circumstances. Lyons added that he wasn’t suggesting the high school student is a dangerous person, but since Gomes is not legally allowed to be here, he had to be taken into custody.

“We’re not going to walk away from anybody,” Lyons said. “We enforce all immigration laws.”

Nick Molinari, president of the Milford Teachers Association said Gomes’ arrest was both unneeded and wrong. The 18-year-old junior, he said, should have been attending practice with his team over the weekend, not sitting in federal custody.

“Instead, ICE agents targeted one of our students in a deliberate act of cruelty, traumatizing his family, friends and peers. This is immoral, unnecessary and should be universally condemned. We will not stand by while the rights and humanity of our students are violated,” the union president said in a statement.

According to Molinari, students are more than just their current immigration status, and the union stands with “its students and the residents of Milford in opposing this dangerous shift in operations.”

“We are committed to defending every student’s right to learn, grow, and be treated with dignity – no matter where they come from,” Molinari said.

Hundreds of Milford High students marched out of class Monday afternoon to protest their classmate’s arrest and call for his release. They marched behind a banner that read “free Marcelo” and gathered on the school grounds to chant the same.

Gomes, according to ICE officials, remains in federal custody pending an appearance before an immigration judge.

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