Professor visiting Harvard arrested by ICE agrees to leave country

US immigration authorities arrested a visiting professor at Harvard law school after he was charged with discharging a pellet gun outside a Massachusetts synagogue the day before Yom Kippur, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Thursday – and he agreed to leave the country.

Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a Brazilian citizen, was arrested on Wednesday by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after his temporary nonimmigrant visa was revoked by the state department following what the Trump administration labeled an “anti-semitic shooting incident” – a description at odds with how local authorities have described the case.

Gouvea, an associate professor at the University of São Paulo law school who had taught at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the fall semester, had agreed to leave the country, the DHS said.

Gouvea’s press representatives in Brazil issued a statement saying that after ICE took him for questioning, it gave him the option of leaving the country voluntarily, allowing him to return to Brazil as of Thursday.

Harvard declined to comment.

Gouvea’s arrest came as the Trump administration pressed Harvard to reach a deal to resolve a litany of allegations it has made against the Ivy League institution, including that the university had not done enough to combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students on campus.

Harvard has sued over some of the actions the administration has taken against it, leading a judge to rule in September that the administration unlawfully terminated more than $2bn in research grants awarded to the university.

Police in Brookline, Massachusetts, arrested Gouvea on 1 October after responding to a report of a person with a gun near the Temple Beth Zion on the eve of the Jewish holiday. Gouvea said he was using a pellet gun to hunt rats nearby, according to a police report.

He reached a deal last month to resolve a charge that he illegally discharged a pellet gun under which he would serve six months of pre-trial probation and pay $386.59 in restitution. Other charges he faced for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and vandalism were dismissed as part of the deal.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims, the Temple Beth Zion has previously told its community members that the incident did not appear to have been fueled by antisemitism, a view shared by the Brookline police department, which investigated the matter.

The temple has said that police informed it 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”.