The U.S. Embassy in Brazil says the Brazilian security attaché, Marcelo Ivo de Carvalho, has been asked to leave the United States by the Trump administration.
De Carvalho, who was based in Miami, had been acting as a liaison with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The request for him to leave follows the detention of former Brazilian intelligence chief Alexandre Ramagem—a close ally of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—in Orlando, Florida, last week.
ICE did not comment publicly on Ramagem’s detention, but Bolsonaro is a political ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and the U.S. State Department later accused the Brazilians of trying to “game” them.
In a post on X on April 20, the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said, “No foreigner gets to game our immigration system to both circumvent formal extradition requests and extend political witch hunts into U.S. territory.”
“Today, we have asked that the relevant Brazilian official depart our nation for attempting to do that,” the bureau added.
The post did not name the official, but the U.S. Embassy later confirmed it referred to de Carvalho.
In September 2025, Ramagem was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup in 2023 by Bolsonaro supporters. His congressional seat was later declared vacant. Brazilian authorities said Ramagem fled the South American nation before he would have started serving his sentence.
Brazil’s federal police said in an April 13 statement that a “fugitive of the country’s justice was arrested.”
“The arrest stemmed from international police cooperation between the Federal Police and U.S. law enforcement authorities,” Brazilian authorities said. “The prisoner is considered a fugitive from Brazilian justice after conviction for the crimes of armed criminal organization, coup d’état and attempted violent abolition of the rule of law.”
After Ramagem’s release on April 16, he posted a video on YouTube, in which he thanked people at the top of the Trump administration for his release, though no official U.S. statement has confirmed their involvement.
“I am here to thank the American government, from the highest echelons of the Trump administration to the people who were already aware of our situation,” Ramagem said.
“I entered the United States in September of last year in a perfectly legal manner, with a valid passport and a valid visa and no convictions whatsoever,” Ramagem added. “Following that we filed a request for asylum.”
He said ICE had checked his paperwork and released him.
Lula Threatens to Reciprocate
On April 21, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaking in Germany, said Brazil would reciprocate.
“We cannot accept this interference and abuse of authority that some Americans want to exert over Brazil,” Lula said.
After his release last week, Ramagem criticized the director general of the Brazilian Federal Police, Andrei Rodrigues, saying the latter had called the Bolsonaro supporters who broke into and vandalized the parliament in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023, “despicable terrorists” but refused to classify organized crime groups like PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorists.
Ramagem was chief of the ABIN intelligence agency from 2019 until 2022, when he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, representing Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party.
In a post on X on April 16, Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who is running for the presidency in the November election in Brazil, wrote: “It was just a matter of time until Ramagem was free and all this misunderstanding was resolved. Stay strong, Ramagem. We’re always on your side.”
“The time of injustices is nearing its end,” Flávio Bolsonaro added.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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