Joe Biden condemned anti-government protests in Brazil as the White House faced calls from Congress to expel Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of the Latin American country, from the US, where he has remained since leaving office.
“Canada, Mexico and the United States condemn the January 8 attack on Brazilian democracy and the peaceful transfer of power,” Biden, the US president, said in a joint statement Monday with Mexican leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Canadian prime minister. Justin Trudeau.
He added: “We stand with Brazil because it preserves democratic institutions. Our government supports the free will of Brazilian citizens.
Bolsonaro, who has faced investigations since becoming president, has been living in self-isolation in Florida since leaving office late last year. Some Democratic lawmakers have called for it to be removed from the US.
Questions about Bolsonaro’s stay in the US came after his supporters on Sunday stormed Congress, the supreme court and the country’s presidential palace in riots similar to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“The US should not be a safe haven for these authoritarians who have inspired domestic terrorism in Brazil,” Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro said on CNN. “He should be sent back to Brazil.”
Prominent progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also called on Bolsonaro to return to Brazil. “We have to stand in solidarity with @LulaOfficialA democratically elected government,” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday, referring to the country’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “The US must stop providing protection to Bolsonaro in Florida.”
Republicans have not joined calls for Bolsonaro’s deportation, although some have condemned the protests, including Florida senator Rick Scott and Republican congressman George Santos, whose parents were born in Brazil.
Brazilian politicians on Monday also joined calls for Bolsonaro to return to the country. Renan Calheiros, a prominent senator, asked Brazil’s supreme court for the “immediate” extradition of the former president, saying his involvement in Sunday’s riots was “undeniable”.
The court will consider the request, which asks the former president to return to Brazil within 72 hours.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US had not yet received a formal request from the Brazilian government about Bolsonaro’s status in the US.
“If and when we do, we’ll deal with it,” he said.
He declined to speak about Bolsonaro’s specific immigration status, citing a policy of avoiding specifics about individual visa cases.
Sullivan said he expects Biden to speak with Lula in the coming days.
A former senior US official working on immigration issues said Bolsonaro may travel to the US on an existing visa, possibly for diplomatic or tourism purposes.
He said it would not be easy for the US government to remove Bolsonaro. “It is not easy legally to remove people from the US who refuse to leave. They often have significant protections once they are in the US,” he said.
He added that the former president of Brazil could remain in the country in a new capacity, for example if he finds another job.
In any case, any removal action “could be a long, multi-year endeavor”, the former official said. “It’s not going to be a quick process.”
Under US immigration law, people can be deported if the secretary of state finds them to be a danger to US foreign policy. “The question is whether the secretary of state will do it,” he said.