\n<\/p>\n
At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was hunting rats.<\/p>\n
APCortizasJr\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Immigration authorities arrested Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, on Wednesday after his J-1 visa was revoked for shooting a BB gun outside of a Boston-area synagogue Oct. 2, the day of Yom Kippur. Gouvea agreed to voluntarily leave the United States rather than be deported.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Department of State revoked Gouvea\u2019s visa Oct. 16, and a month later, Gouvea accepted a plea deal \u201con the charge of illegal use of the air rifle while his other charges for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and vandalizing property were dismissed,\u201d the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gouvea shot the pellet gun outside Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Mass., just a few miles south of the Harvard campus, The New York Times<\/em> reported. Private security guards for the synagogue heard a loud noise outside, and the temple was put in a lockdown. When a guard saw Gouvea behind a tree and attempted to arrest him, they engaged in a brief physical struggle and then Gouvea fled, the Times <\/em>reported. He was later arrested by Brookline police. Gouvea fired two total shots, one of which police later discovered had shattered a car window. Harvard officials put Gouvea on administrative leave shortly after his October arrest.<\/p>\n In its news release, the Department of Homeland Security called the act an \u201canti-Semitic shooting incident,\u201d a characterization federal officials have maintained since the incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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,\u201d Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said in a statement. \u201cWe are under zero obligation to admit foreigners who commit these inexplicably reprehensible acts or to let them stay here. Secretary Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and commit anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism should think again. You are not welcome here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was \u201chunting rats.\u201d He was not charged with a hate crime by local police, and leaders from Temple Beth Zion told the Times<\/em> they did not believe the shooting was motivated by bias.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what we were initially told by police, the individual was unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue, or that it was a religious holiday,\u201d Benjamin Maron, the synagogue\u2019s executive director, and Larry Kraus, its president, wrote in the statement to the Times<\/em>. \u201cIt is potentially dangerous to use a BB gun in such a populated spot, but it does not appear to have been fueled by antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n A lawyer for Gouvea also told the Times <\/em>in October that the matter was \u201ca total misunderstanding of an entirely innocent situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was hunting rats. APCortizasJr\/iStock\/Getty Images Immigration authorities arrested Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, on Wednesday after his J-1 visa was revoked for shooting a BB gun outside of a Boston-area synagogue Oct. 2, the day of Yom Kippur. Gouvea agreed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[5718,676,2081,2957,6504,811],"class_list":{"0":"post-36422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-arrest","9":"tag-harvard","10":"tag-immigration","11":"tag-leave","12":"tag-prof","13":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}