Brazil to Restrict Visa-Free Immigrants After PF Identifies Country as Gateway to U.S.

The Brazilian government has decided to tighten the rules for entry into the country of immigrants without visas starting next week, after the federal police highlighted that Brazil has become a route used by criminal organizations dedicated to human trafficking, mainly from Asia, seeking to reach the United States.

From Monday onwards, transit passengers who do not have a visa to enter Brazil and have another country as their final destination will have to continue their journey or return to their place of origin, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security told Reuters.

According to the ministry, these passengers who, by chance, remain in the international transit area of ​​the Guarulhos airport, in São Paulo, or in other airports with international connections, if they do not have a visa to enter Brazilian territory, will not be able to remain in the country.

National Justice Secretary Jean Uema told Reuters that the shelter cannot be used fraudulently, stressing that the Brazilian government is not issuing new rules, but rather exploiting the possibility of readmitting people in a very specific situation: passengers in transit in Brazil, who disembark in the international transit zone and are not heading to another safe country.

“We believe that within two or three weeks we will stop this route,” he told Reuters.

The Ministry of Justice and the PF Migration Department have noted a recent explosion in the number of travelers from Asian countries who, instead of continuing their journey to other Latin American countries, take advantage of a stopover or connection at Guarulhos Airport, in São Paulo, to stay in Brazil and seek refuge, according to agencies and a senior PF source working on the case.

The investigations show that asylum requests in the country would be persecution and threats in the countries of origin, which in theory is foreseen by law. The goal, however, is to have free transit in Brazil and to be able to continue traveling by land.

“They are asking for refuge as insurance: if they are caught at the US border, they will return to Brazil, and not to their country of origin,” a PF source told Reuters, saying that this would mean a new attempt to enter that country. too expensive.

This source stressed that the people are not criminals, but rather victims of an international human trafficking system and that they are using the shelter facility under the guidance of coyotes, as criminals who profit from illegal human trafficking are called.

From January 2023 to early July, according to a PF report, 8,327 asylum applications were filed at Guarulhos airport. However, only 117 of them remained active in the national migration system (1.41% of the total).

“(…) In other words, 99.59% of the people who requested refuge at the airport, 8,210 people, have already left the country or are in the country illegally,” the document emphasizes.

According to the PF document, more than 70% of requests at Guarulhos airport come from three nationalities: India (23.9%), Vietnam (23.5%) and Nepal (22.8%).

Of the 8,327 travellers who requested refuge, according to the PF, only 262 had requested the CPF, a document that is easy to obtain for those with a refugee protocol and that allows them to carry out various civil life acts, such as finding a job or opening a bank account.

“These numbers clearly indicate that the reception facility is being abusively used at the André Franco Montoro International Airport in Guarulhos/SP by people who intend to migrate to other countries, using the country only as a transit route, probably instructed by migrant traffickers,” the document stated.

“These gangs, which operate globally and are highly dispersed, are a constant target of the Federal Police, which has already carried out dozens of operations in 2024, with arrests, searches, arrests, etc.,” he stressed.

DANGEROUS ROUTE VIA ACRI

The PF also found that, in 1,391 cases, there was a movement to leave Brazil in less than 30 days from the request for asylum. And in 1,090 of these cases, these people left through the Assis Brasil border, in Acre.

According to the PF source, people risk attempting to migrate on foot from Brazil to the United States, passing through the Darién forest in Panama, one of the places considered the most dangerous in the world. “The dream is so big that people do not evaluate the risks,” the source said.

Source: Terra

Rose

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