A right-wing Brazilian influencer who claimed that Donald Trump's tough measures against migrants only target “criminals”was arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.
Junior Pena was arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey PHOTO Instagram video capture
Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
“I support Donald Trump – I like the guy”said the South American TikToker and Instagrammer, whose page claims to show “the reality of the United States” from a migrant's perspective.
In an earlier video, Pena urged Brazilians to keep calm and not “disappear” after reports emerged that ICE agents had picked up migrants, including Brazilians. “But they're all criminals. All of them!”he falsely claimed about uplifted migrants.
On Saturday, Pena was himself taken into custody and taken to the Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark, New Jersey. A friend told local newspaper the Brazilian Times that Pena was taken into custody after missing a court hearing. His lawyer, Andrew Lattarulo, was trying to resolve the situation and prevent his transfer to another state, writes The Guardian.
The Brazilian influencer has been living in the US since 2009 and comes from Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, where many people have emigrated to the US and Europe.
Pena uses social media to share the stories of migrants, but also critical of Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and those who support the recently jailed far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of Trump.
The Brazilian community in the US, estimated at around 2 million people, has been hit hard by Trump's anti-immigrant policies, with the number of Brazilians deported reaching a record 2,785 last year, compared to 1,640 in 2024.
In a recent report on “the real hunt” carried out under Trump, the Brazilian magazine Veja warned readers: “There is an atmosphere of fear on the streets, where anyone who 'looks foreign' can be targeted … regardless of their status [imigrațional]”.
Brazilian leftists invaded Pena's Instagram account to mock him after news of his arrest went viral. “You supported Trump and in the end you paid the consequences”one of them wrote.
