I’m not laughing
Dean Baker pointed to this anecdote from the legendary Mike Elk. He’d just arrived in Rio de Janeiro after a 24-hour flight with three connections when authorities pulled him out of line. They’d flagged his passport:
A customs agent led me to a room, where the Brazilian federal police told me to wait. I nervously began texting my journalist friends, worried that I might be sent back.
See, in 2024, when I was covering the assassination of Rio city councilwoman Marielle Franco, I misread the legal instructions for a visa and accidentally overstayed by about two weeks.
The visa instructions had said that I could stay for 6 months. However, I forgot to read the fine print that after three months, I needed to go to the federal police and register for another 3 months, so I had “illegally” stayed in Brazil.
As I sat in the Brazilian federal police office in Rio de Janeiro airport, I began texting my dad, terrified. Everyone knows that in Brasil, the police can do whatever they want to you, allegedly without repercussions.
Finally, after about an hour, a Brazilian federal police officer emerged and said, “Don’t worry, we’re just gonna make you pay a fine for overstaying your visa.” My muscles tensed up as I waited for him to tell me how much… 132 reals, the officer told me, the equivalent of $27.
I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thank God.” The Brazilian federal police officer immediately started joking with me, “What do you think, we were gonna throw you in jail? We’re not ICE, we’re Brazilians.”
Stephen Miller probably finds that funny. Mike didn’t. Nor do I.
As I paid my fine and left the federal police office, I thought that if a Brazilian had done the same as I did in the United States, they would likely be thrown into painful prison conditions, perhaps even in solitary confinement for months at a time. But in Brasil, they welcome immigrants and tourists, so I was allowed to go on my way.
The Brazilian federal police officer wasn’t the only person to joke about ICE with me. Nearly everywhere I go in Brasil, though, people are asking me about the immigration situation in the United States. The other day, at a street-food vendor’s cart, the owner was watching a video of 5-year-old Liam Ramos being released from ICE detention.
I really miss Tom Lehrer about now. He was warning foreigners about visiting the United States in 1965 (and he wasn’t talking about Bloody Sunday or the Watts riots). God knows what Lehrer would have done with ICE wilding.