The Brazilian Foreign Ministry has cited Gabriel Escobar, the US Ambassador’s Chargé d’Affaires, on Monday. According to media reports, the diplomat was asked uncomfortable questions in connection with a deportation flight from the US and Brazilian individuals being transported on Friday were mistreated.
The US Embassy in Brasília confirmed the meeting between Escobar and Márcia Loureiro from the Consular Affairs Department, but did not disclose the purpose or topic of the discussion. The official statement described the gathering as a “technical meeting”.
On Friday, a deportation flight from the US, which was supposed to take off after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, arrived in the Brazilian city of Manaus. The plane, carrying 88 deported Brazilians, was meant to land in Belo Horizonte, but due to a technical issue, it landed earlier in Manaus. Passengers complained of aggression, threats and humiliation by the accompanying US agents during the flight, with some reporting they were made to wear handcuffs for 50 hours. The plane’s air conditioning system was also out of order.
As a result, Brazilian authorities banned the plane from continuing to Belo Horizonte on Friday evening. The deported individuals spent the night in Manaus and were flown to the capital of the state of Minas Gerais the following day on a Brazilian military plane.
The Brazilian Foreign Ministry expressed outrage over these developments, referencing an agreement from 2018 in which the US committed to a dignified, respectful and humane deportation process.
Mass deportations of undocumented immigrants were a central campaign promise of the Republican candidate. After his inauguration, Trump reiterated his plan to “send back millions and millions of criminal migrants” to their countries of origin. Four days after Trump’s return to the White House, his spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, announced that 538 “criminal illegal migrants” had been arrested in the US, with hundreds more being deported by military plane.