Brazil clamps down on migrants heading to the US

Brazil’s Justice Ministry said the move followed a sweeping police investigation that found criminal gangs have been taking advantage of the country’s refugee rules to help migrants from countries such as Nepal, Somalia and Ghana get to the U.S. Brazil allows visitors to file for refugee status on arrival with little difficulty—a legacy of the country’s long-held diplomatic tradition of friendly neutrality.

More of these arrivals are eventually finding their way to the U.S. border as global migration reaches record highs. Almost 59,000 people filed for refugee status in Brazil last year, more than double the total in 2021.

The migrants, and the gangs helping them, exploit Brazil’s system, which lets foreigners seeking refugee status live and work legally while their application is processed. Meanwhile, the migrants make their way north, often going via the Amazon rainforest and crossing into Peru, the justice ministry said.

Other South American countries see Brazil as the region’s “weak link" on migration, the continent’s first place of arrival for many African and Asian immigrants, said Leonardo Freitas, a Washington-based immigration consultant. “All the countries including Mexico are putting pressure on Brazil to curtail this passage because it’s the gateway for everybody, from drug traffickers to human traffickers."

Panama President José Raúl Mulino last month called on Brazil to help to ease the migrant crisis at the Darién Gap, a heavily traversed stretch of dense jungle around the border of Colombia and Panama. “Each country has the right to decide on the entry of people into its own jurisdiction, but when a country becomes a gateway because of their beneficial migration rules…they have a responsibility to help," he said in a television interview. Some 221,582 people crossed the Darién Gap between January and the end of July this year, according to Panama’s government.

Brazil’s efforts come as the U.S. and Mexico have pushed down illegal border crossings to the lowest level since 2020, motivated by presidential elections on both sides of the border.

Brazil’s Justice Ministry said its measures followed a police investigation at the country’s main international airport in São Paulo that found most arrivals who recently filed for refugee status didn’t genuinely need refuge.

“The objective of these travelers is not to seek the protection of the Brazilian state…but to carry on their journey to North America, principally to the U.S. and Canada," the ministry said.

Since January last year, more than 8,300 people requested refugee status at São Paulo’s airport but only 3% of them later requested a Brazilian tax number, a basic requirement for a bank account, suggesting everyone else left the country, the ministry said. Less than 2% remained on the country’s migration database or renewed their initial refugee request when it expired, again suggesting they left Brazil, the government said.

Of those refugees at the airport, some 70% were from India, Nepal and Pakistan, with the remainder mainly from a handful of African countries—nationalities that would normally need a visa to stay in Brazil.

Under the government’s new rules, passengers on connecting flights through Brazil will only be able to stay in the country if they have a visa or if they are from a country that has a visa exemption.

Immigration lawyers said Brazil needed to do more to close loopholes in its migration rules.

The latest measures don’t affect arrivals from countries with visa exemptions, such as the more than 18,000 Angolans who entered Brazil last year, of which about a fifth filed for refugee status, according to government figures. It also doesn’t affect those who enter by sea, including stowaways from Africa.

The problem lies in the enforcement of the country’s immigration laws, not the laws themselves, said Manuel Furriela, a professor in international law and founder of a commission for refugees at the Brazilian Bar Association in São Paulo. While many arrivals who file for refugee status don’t meet the necessary criteria, it can take more than a year for the country’s overburdened public officials to process their request.

This allows arrivals to live and work legally in Brazil meanwhile—and in some cases, prepare their journey to the U.S. border, he said.

“We also have to be careful that these measures don’t affect those people who are genuine refugees, who actually need protection," said Furriela.

Jenny Carolina González contributed to this article.

Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com