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NEW BEDFORD — Erica Hartman DosSantos, 33, had been living with diagnosed brain cancer for nearly six months when she walked into yoga class on June 8. Because she was unable to work, she and her husband, Emerson Garcia DosSantos, 34, had decided he would continue to work as a painter while she focused on her health.
As the class began around 10 a.m., she got a phone call from an unknown number. She ignored it, but they called again. And again. She noticed it was coming in from Burlington, Massachusetts.
“I just knew something was wrong with Emerson,” Hartman DosSantos recalled.
It was her husband. He had called her from the Enforcement and Removal Operations Field Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Burlington. Earlier that morning, federal agents had taken him into custody in Fall River, after stopping a vehicle he was in on the way to a house painting job.
“He was picking up somebody from work and he said the FBI and immigration were there and they were looking for somebody else,” Hartman DosSantos said. “He just got caught in the crosshairs.”
Her husband now faces deportation to his native Brazil.
A love story
Hartman DosSantos, a natural-born U.S. citizen, met Garcia DosSantos at a party in her home state of Michigan around April 2022. She said the conversation immediately drew her in. According to Hartman DosSantos, Garcia DosSantos had only been in the U.S. since 2019, the year he came on a tourist visa from his hometown of Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
“It was nice because he listened so intently,” she said, a smile appearing on her face. “I didn’t realize it was because of the language barrier.”
The couple began dating in June 2022 and tied the knot on Jan. 25, 2023. They married quickly because they were following their hearts, she said, adding that she has not regretted the decision since.
“I went in with a lot of trepidation,” she said. “But throughout our marriage, he has always put me first.”
Diagnosis
By May 2024, the couple had moved to Lynn in search of economic opportunities and the social support network provided by Garcia DosSantos’s family living in the area. That is also when he had his first, and at least in the Commonwealth, only run-in with legal issues.
According to records obtained by The Light during a statewide search for criminal cases, Garcia DosSantos was charged in Lynn with misdemeanor offenses of operating without a license and a headlight violation in May 2024. The cases were both dismissed in August.
According to his wife, Garcia DosSantos received leniency because he was in the process of obtaining a driver privilege card, a driver’s license for people without legal residency, available in Massachusetts since 2023.
A month later, the couple moved to the New Bedford area, attracted by the culture and the prominence of Portuguese speakers, making life easier for Garcia DosSantos. There were more practical concerns as well.
“We could have our whole two-bedroom apartment in New Bedford for the same price of a room in Lynn,” she said.
She began working in the memory care section of an assisted living facility, a job she said she loved. Then, in mid-2024, she started to notice something.
“At the beginning, it was just frequent stomach aches and migraines,” she said. “But I passed out last year at a bus stop in Lynn.”
After several months of increasingly concerning health incidents, Garcia DosSantos took her to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital. After multiple trips there, she was put in touch with a neurologist and underwent brain surgery at a hospital in Boston on Dec. 18, 2024.
Cancer
That was the day she got the news.
“They found out I have tumors in my brain after surgery,” she said.
She was diagnosed with Stage 1 glioma, a type of brain cancer. Though she was given a positive prognosis, treatment has not been easy. Her illness and symptoms associated with it, such as memory and fatigue, forced her to leave her job. She said she is a patient at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
That left the entirety of the family’s finances in the hands of her husband.
“Emerson really helped me,” she said. “I had a lot of memory issues” and it made work difficult.
Struggles
Hartman DosSantos sat patiently in a conference room as Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the Immigrants’ Assistance Center, brought her a glass of water.
“I haven’t had any luck finding an attorney,” she told Hughes as Hughes handed her the cup. “I’m trying to stay positive, though.”
Hughes, experienced in helping those in need, summarized what she had done.
“I have reached out to Catholic Charities. I have reached out to SouthCoast Legal Services. And I have reached out to the ACLU,” she told Hartman DosSantos. “Unfortunately, we’re seeing a shortage [of immigration attorneys] in Bristol County and the need is picking up.”
The two spoke more about her living needs while DosSantos remains in custody. Hughes said she was working on getting rental assistance for Hartman DosSantos and confirmed she was on Medicaid to continue her treatments.
Nonetheless, Hartman DosSantos said she’s focused on securing legal representation for her husband, now in ICE custody at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. By The Light’s count, Garcia DosSantos is the 29th of 41 New Bedford residents arrested as part of immigration operations since Donald Trump returned to the presidency.
“Looking back, I wish we would’ve prioritized normalizing his status,” Hartman DosSantos said. “Right now, my biggest concern is for him.”
She said that she makes about 15 calls a day in a frantic search to find legal representation. Sometimes, she’ll have a follow-up meeting, sometimes she won’t. She sent an email to the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, asking her to intervene on her husband’s behalf.
She said that she gets some help from her family in Michigan, but they are all far away. Dealing with the possible deportation of her husband, the new financial pressures, and emotional dysregulation from her tumors has taken a toll.
“I’m doing my best to advocate for myself and for him,” Hartman DosSantos said. “This has all been kind of a lot for me.”
On their daily three-minute phone call, her husband says that conditions in Plymouth are good and that staff at the facility treat him well. He always focuses the conversation on her.
“Even now, in this terrible situation,” she said, “his first question is always: ‘How are you doing? How is your head?’”
Hartman DosSantos added that her husband believes he will be deported to Brazil sometime around July 5. If that does happen, she said she would move to Brazil to be with her husband.
“He’s always told me: I don’t want to stay here for America anymore,” she said. “I want to stay for you.
“We want to stay together,” she continued. “That’s our main thing.”
Kevin G. Andrade can be reached at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
She should emigrate to Brazil legally with him.
Perhaps their immigration process is easier to navigate, though I doubt it, maybe it will be.
That actually sounds like the best option at this point. What kind of medical facilities can she get there and what still needs to be done medically here?
Where is her GoFundMe? Let’s get her out to him.