Both the Colombian and Brazilian governments posted online thinly veiled messages to Trump, showing their citizens returning home and noting that they deserve respect. “They are free and dignified, and they are in their homeland where they are loved,” Petro wrote on Tuesday.
The Pew Research Center estimated there were 11 million immigrants living in the US without legal permission in 2022, but more recent estimates put the population at almost 14 million. This includes around 4 million Mexicans, 2.1 million Central Americans, 230,000 Brazilians and 190,000 Colombians.
The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, had stern words in response to the deportation debacle.Credit: AP
Petro had initially turned away the deportation flights because they were operated by the US military, a recent change under the Trump administration. It was Colombian military aircraft that flew the Colombian deportees home on Tuesday. Mexico is not yet known to have received any deportation flights on military planes.
The Brazilians were flown on a commercial charter. The Brazilian government summoned the top American diplomat on Monday to discuss the conditions of that flight. The government has repeatedly asked the US government to shackle deportees only if they pose a threat, including in a 2022 call between Brazil’s foreign minister and then-secretary of state Antony Blinken, according to a summary of Brazilian efforts detailed in a 2022 government document.
US officials have largely ignored those requests, according to Brazilian officials and academics who track the issue. The US government has deported about 7700 Brazilians on roughly 95 flights since 2020, according to Brazilian officials. On many of those flights, ICE agents have chained Brazilian deportees at the hands and feet, officials said.
Yet the deportation flight to Brazil – the first of Trump’s new term – was also the first to draw such public backlash from the Brazilian government. The difference last Friday, officials and passengers said, was the condition of the plane and the rough handling of the deportees by ICE agents.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
For many of the Brazilian deportees, the journey began weeks ago, with long bus rides across the United States – from California, Georgia, Arizona and Texas – to a federal immigration centre in Alexandria, Louisiana. The men spent those rides handcuffed, sometimes for days.
In the early morning hours last Friday, ICE agents filled the passenger jet with the deportees, putting dozens of shackled men in the rear and women and children, who were not handcuffed, in the front, the deportees said.
The flight, operated by a charter airline, GlobalX Air, had problems from the start. The passengers said that on the first attempt, the plane struggled to take off. After a mechanic worked on a turbine, it departed, but passengers were uneasy.
“They started to question: If something happens, how are you going to take the shackles off 80 people?” said Luiz Campos, 35, one of the Brazilian deportees, who was on the flight after spending six weeks in Texas detention centres. “‘Please, take off these chains,’” he recalled people asking. “They said, ‘No. It’s protocol. It’s always like this.’”
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Tensions increased hours later during a refuelling stop in Panama. Again, the plane struggled to take off, and this time, three passengers described seeing smoke come from an engine on the wing. The incident also caused the air-conditioning to stop working, they said, and the plane quickly became a sauna in the tropical heat.
Eventually, the air-conditioning was restored, and the plane took off again. Hours later, it landed in Manaus, the largest city in the Brazilian Amazon. The flight was scheduled to finish in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a city 2600 kilometres to the south. Brazil’s federal police said the plane landed because of a technical issue.
GlobalX Air and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
In Manaus, the plane then struggled to take off for a third time, again with apparent engine issues, passengers said. And then, again, the air stopped flowing inside the cabin.
Some deportees said that in the muggy cabin, the shackled men began pushing their way up the aisles, physically pressing up against ICE agents standing in the way. Agents and passengers shouted and pushed one another, and several deportees said they were struck. Then some passengers opened the emergency exits.
Within minutes, at least seven handcuffed men stepped out onto a wing. “Call the police!” one shouted, according to a video of the moment.
Brazil’s federal police eventually entered the cabin and ordered ICE agents to let the Brazilians go. With people at the airport looking on and taking video, the deportees said, the ICE agents sought to remove the shackles before letting them off the plane.
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“But no one would allow that. The passengers themselves said, ‘No, now you’re not taking off the handcuffs,’” Campos said. “Because if they removed the handcuffs, I think the story would be different.”
News broadcasts showed the shackled men shuffling across the tarmac. Brazilian officials then removed the chains, and the passengers spent the night at the Manaus airport. On Saturday, a Brazilian military plane took them to Belo Horizonte.
There they were greeted by Brazil’s minister of human rights, Macaé Evaristo. “I’m here at the request of President Lula,” she told the passengers on the plane, according to a video posted by the Brazilian government. “Our position is that countries can have their immigration policies, but they can never violate anyone’s rights.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
