RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) - Alexandre Ramagem, a former Brazilian congressman sentenced to 16 years and one month in prison for his role in a failed plot to overturn Brazil's 2022 election and keep former President Jair Bolsonaro in power, was detained Monday by U.S. immigration authorities in Orlando, Florida, months after fleeing Brazil and becoming a fugitive from Brazilian justice.
A former director of Brazil's intelligence agency and an ally of the Bolsonaro family, Ramagem fled Brazil clandestinely across the border into Guyana, according to Federal Police Director-General Andrei Rodrigues.
In December, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the opening of extradition proceedings against Ramagem. He also lost his seat in the lower house and had his diplomatic passports canceled.
Ramagem is the only member of the coup plot's central group who has not yet begun serving his sentence in Brazil.
According to Paulo Figueiredo, a pro-Bolsonaro blogger and partner at the immigration firm assisting Ramagem, the former congressman "was not arrested, but detained after a police stop in Orlando, initially for a minor traffic violation and then referred to ICE, a common procedure in Florida."
Figueiredo said in a statement that Ramagem's status in the country is legal and that he has a pending asylum application still under review, which would allow him to remain lawfully in the United States.
He also said that "the Brazilian government had no involvement whatsoever in this episode. This is a standard U.S. immigration procedure. It has absolutely nothing to do with Brazil's extradition request, which remains under review at the State Department."
People detained by ICE go through an administrative process to determine their immigration status. If they are found to be in the country unlawfully, they may be deported. The process also examines possible false statements in visa applications and whether a person violated the terms of a visa.
Joao Pedro Drummond, a criminal lawyer and partner at Sao Paulo-based Drummond Nogueira Advogados, said that while extradition is a formal procedure of cooperation between sovereign states, immigration detention is an internal U.S. process.
According to Drummond, there are now two possible legal paths for Ramagem to be returned to Brazil. The quickest is administrative deportation. If the immigration irregularity is confirmed in a hearing before an immigration judge, the United States could send him back to Brazil without going through the formal extradition process.
The second would be extradition itself since the request was submitted by the Brazilian government, and a treaty between the two countries has been in force since 1964. Drummond said the defense may argue political persecution and invoke the political offense exception.
"The strategy will be to persuade the judge that sending Ramagem back to Brazil would amount to political persecution," he said. "That argument may carry rhetorical appeal in the current U.S. political climate, but it is legally weak given that he was convicted by a sovereign constitutional court with full due process. If the case reaches the formal extradition stage, the defense will almost certainly argue that the alleged conduct was political rather than criminal."
For Rodrigo Stumpf Gonzalez, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Ramagem's detention sends a signal about the limits of political alliances as protection against judicial decisions.
"The U.S. was treated as a sanctuary by Bolsonaro allies, but they failed to account for pragmatism as a hallmark of the Trump administration," Gonzalez said. "That undermines the sense of impunity and reinforces the weight of the Supreme Court's decisions. It does not mean Ramagem will face immediate deportation or be immediately returned to Brazil, but he can no longer count on a gilded exile."
Courthouse News reporter Marilia Marasciulo is based in Brazil.
Source: Courthouse News Service
