By Luciana Magalhaes
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian officials demanded that U.S. agents remove handcuffs from a group of deportees who were flown to the South American country on Friday, with a prominent minister in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government calling the practice “blatant disrespect” for the rights of his fellow citizens.
Federal police, acting under the instructions of Brazilian Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, met the flight after it made an unexpected landing in the Amazonian city of Manaus due to technical problems, the Brazilian government said in a statement on Saturday.
The plane, which was carrying 88 Brazilian passengers, 16 U.S. security agents, and eight crew members, had been originally scheduled to arrive in Belo Horizonte in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the statement said.
The handcuffs were removed from the passengers after the intervention of the Brazilian police, the government said.
After he was informed of the incident, Lula ordered that the passengers be flown aboard a Brazilian Air Force plane to their final destination, ensuring they could complete their journey with “dignity and safety,” according to a Brazilian Justice Ministry statement.
The flight was the second this year from the U.S. carrying undocumented migrants who had been deported back to Brazil and the first since U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to Brazil’s Justice Ministry and federal police.
The Trump administration has undertaken a sweeping immigration crackdown, with the Republican president vowing to use mass deportations to remove undocumented migrants in the U.S.
The use of handcuffs and other restraints on migrants being deported on flights from the U.S. to Brazil has stirred controversy in the South American nation. Conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, also called for a halt to the practice.
Officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Additional reporting by Ted Hesson and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Paul Simao)
Comments