Members of Brazil’s Joint Congressional Investigation Committee that is looking into the emigration of Brazilians to the United States and other countries will travel tomorrow to the American city of Laredo, in the state of Texas.
The purpose of the trip is to accompany the repatriation of 300 Brazilian citizens, 199 of them from the state of Minas Gerais. They were all arrested for entering illegally in the US. The group will arrive next Wednesday (3), in Belo Horizonte, on a plane chartered by the US government.
Last year, several planeloads of illegal Brazilian immigrants in the United States touched down in Brazil. In one of them there were 251 immigrants who were confined in prisons in Boston, Houston, and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Over 60% of the immigrants were from Minas Gerais.
At that time, Deputy João Magno from the Minas Gerais’s Workers Party, in charge of negotiating the repatriation of the Brazilian immigrants, met the group at the airport.
The lawmaker affirmed that the Chamber and the Senate planned to install a Joint Parliamentary Investigation Commission (CPMI) to combat the groups and networks that help people travel abroad illegally.
“We want to discover here, through a CPMI, the network that is still sending people to the United States, exposing these Brazilians to a huge risk of being arrested and even killed,” he said.
ABr