Bolsonaro’s stay in Florida puts pressure on Biden after the riots in Brasília

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s presence in the United States has become a diplomatic quandary for President Joe Biden after his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia over the weekend.

A former adviser said Monday that Bolsonaro has been hospitalized near Orlando, Florida, with abdominal pain, after being seen in the area in recent days, including at a Publix supermarket and a KFC restaurant.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that the US has not received a request for Bolsonaro’s extradition from Brazil. After the silence in Brasilia, the Biden team is not weighing its options. 

Administration officials are considering whether they can do something to entice Bolsonaro to leave the US, according to people familiar with the talks.

Discussions about options are at an early stage, and have included asking him to leave or exploring reasons for canceling his visa, the people said. They asked not to be named because no decision has been made.

Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters invaded Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace on Sunday, an incident with strong parallels to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Bolsonaro and Trump are political allies who pursue populist and nationalist agendas and support each other in their re-election bids.

Furthermore, both stoked suspicions about their countries’ electoral systems and refused to budge after their defeats. Bolsonaro arrived in the US on December 30 while he was still president, skipping the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

A Brazilian senator asked High Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday to order Bolsonaro’s immediate return to the country.

Senator Renan Calheiros said that Bolsonaro has to explain his alleged encouragement to the rioters who stormed Brasilia. He asked the court to issue an arrest warrant if the former president refuses to cooperate with the investigation.

Moraes, who is presiding over an investigation into alleged acts against Brazil’s democracy, has already issued several arrest warrants for Bolsonaro supporters.

One of the challenges for US officials trying to expedite Bolsonaro’s departure is figuring out how he got into the US. There is uncertainty about which visa he obtained within the administration, people familiar with the matter said. He possibly used his diplomatic passport, but he could also have used a personal passport and be visiting Florida on a tourist visa.

His presence in the state, and images of him visiting local restaurants and grocery stores, were initially the subject of mockery online. But Bolsonaro’s residence in Florida became serious after the Brasilia riots, fueled by unsubstantiated claims among his supporters that the Brazilian election was rigged.

Bolsonaro condemned the destruction of public property, taking to Twitter to say “depredations and invasions of public buildings as we saw today, just like the acts carried out by the left in 2013 and 2017, are not within the rules.”

The protests had echoes of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist who defended false claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election before the insurrection, used his War Room podcast and posts in the Gettr social media site to push the idea that the Brazilian elections were stolen and to support the rioters.

Bannon posted on Gettr on October 30 after Lula da Silva defeated Bolsonaro “this election was stolen in broad daylight.” Bannon called the rioters “Brazilian freedom fighters” on Gettr and said: “Lula stole the Elections, Brazilians know it.”

The comments were in keeping with Bannon’s past support for Bolsonaro and his family. After Trump lost, Bannon advised Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, and suggested that Bolsonaro’s Brazil was an embodiment of the brand of right-wing nationalism that Trump had tried to impose on the United States.

“In many ways, the movement in Brazil is actually much more advanced than we are in the United States,” Bannon told Bloomberg at the time.

Some Democratic lawmakers have urged Biden to extradite Bolsonaro, increasing the pressure on the administration. Representatives Joaquín Castro of Texas and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York condemned the actions of Bolsonaro supporters as domestic terrorism.

“The USA must stop granting Bolsonaro refuge in Florida,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet. “Almost two years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we are seeing fascist movements abroad trying to do the same in Brazil.”

Administrations in the past have moved quickly to respond to such extradition requests, when they come. In 2018, the US extradited former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who was later cleared of espionage and embezzlement charges.

“So far we have not received any official request from the Brazilian government related to this matter,” Sullivan said. “If and when we do we’ll take care of it and if and when we have any information to provide we will.”

Bolsonaro is not yet facing criminal charges in Brazil, meaning Lula da Silva’s government has no basis for an extradition request. This could change as the investigation into the riots progresses. His hospitalization follows several surgeries since he was stabbed in the abdomen while campaigning in 2018.

Although he declined to speak about Bolsonaro individually, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that people traveling to the US on what is known as the A visa, reserved for government officials and diplomats, have 30 days to change their immigration status if they leave their job while in the United States.

“It would be up to the visa holder to take that action,” Price said. “If an individual has no basis to be in the US, that individual is subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security.”

Asked if the US was waiting for Lula da Silva’s government to reach out, Sullivan said: “I don’t want that to be taken as an implication.”

“The USA takes action on visas all the time, for all sorts of reasons,” Sullivan said. “In this particular case, this particular individual, again, I have to proceed with extreme caution in terms of how I talk about it because of the legal issues and the precedent issues involved.”

With the assistance of Josh Wingrove

With information from Bloomberg