By Emmanuel Nduka
Following Monday’s surge in migrants disembarking during stopovers at Sao Paulo’s main airport in a bid to seek asylum in the country, the Brazilian Government is now tightening entry requirements.
The goal of the ‘stopovers’ according to the government, is to enter Brazil and make their way overland to the United States.
“Brazil has become a route for criminal organizations that smuggle immigrants and traffic people. Authorities have identified an exponential increase in the number of nationals mainly from Asian countries,” Brazil’s justice ministry said in a statement to AFP.
The statement added that travelers buy plane tickets with final destinations in other South American countries, and are advised by people smugglers to apply for asylum in Brazil.
The travelers are mostly seeking to head north through Colombia and then Panama via the perilous Darien Gap jungle in the hope of a better life in the United States.
But most of the travelers arrive at Brazil’s biggest aviation hub, Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, where hundreds of migrants can spend weeks waiting in a crowded transit zone.
Last week authorities estimated 481 people were currently stuck in limbo in the airport. Local media report that many are from India, Nepal and Vietnam.
I’m the same period, a Brazilian local television station showed images of dozens of people wearing masks in a long line waiting for food.
On August 13, a Ghanaian man died five days after his arrival, after falling ill and being transferred to a public hospital, where he suffered a heart attack, the Federal Police told AFP.
As part of efforts to clamp down on the trend, Brazil’s government decided that from Monday, travelers from countries for which Brazil requires a visa will now have to obtain a transit visa for a stopover.
The new rules also require asylum seekers to prove that they are suffering political persecution or violence in their countries of origin.
Guarulhos Airport is one of the busiest in Latin America, welcoming some 35 million travelers annually. According to official data, the number of asylum applications at the airport has increased 60-fold in ten years, from 69 in 2013 to 4,239 in 2023.
A recent report by Brazil’s Public Defense, an independent organization that offers legal aid to the poor, highlighted “repeated situations of human rights violations”, particularly for children, unaccompanied teens or women “in situations of extreme vulnerability”.
Migrants “sleep on the ground” and “the demand for medical care is only increasing”, the report said, adding that “very poor hygiene and food conditions” persist.
