Harvard professor agrees to leave country after pellet gun arrest

A Brazilian academic serving as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School was arrested by U.S. immigration authorities and charged with firing a pellet gun outside a Massachusetts synagogue the day before Yom Kippur.

Carlos Portugal Gouvea, an associate professor at Săo Paulo Law School who taught at Harvard for the fall semester, was taken into custody on Dec. 3 and agreed to leave the country rather than face deportation, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. State Department revoked Gouvea’s temporary nonimmigrant visa after what the Trump administration described as an “anti-Semitic shooting incident,” though local authorities have painted a different picture.

“Do NOT mess with houses of worship or people of faith in this country,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division chief, said on social media after the incident. “Not on this watch.”

Gouvea was arrested after police in Brookline, Massachusetts, got a report of a person with a gun near Temple Beth Zion on Oct. 1, the eve of the Jewish holiday. Gouvea told police he was hunting rats in the area, a department report said.

Temple leaders have said the incident did not seem to be a case of antisemitism, a characterization backed by Brookline police, who conducted the investigation.

According to the Harvard Crimson, the university newspaper, synagogue leadership informed congregants in an email that Gouvea had told police he “was unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue or that it was a religious holiday.”

Last month, Gouvea agreed to pay $386 in restitution as part of a deal that would let him serve six months of pretrial probation on a charge of illegally discharging a pellet gun. Charges of vandalism, disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace were dismissed as part of the bargain.

The incident has unfolded as Harvard faces pressure from the Trump administration to settle its allegations against the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university, including accusations that the Ivy League school has failed to adequately protect Jewish students on campus.

The university has not commented on the incident.