Brazilians’ visibility heightens amid deportation debates

Contentions surrounding deportations are worrying immigrants, their families and elected officials alike. While much discussion has centered Mexicans, Haitians and Central Americans, just this January, 88 Brazilians were repatriated, cuffed and shackled, to southeastern Brazil.

Central Texas is home to just over 4,000 Brazilians, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. They may be your neighbors, your kids’ teacher or the people sitting beside you at the bar without you knowing it.

“There’s no Brazilian stereotype,” said Marco Mussi, owner of Brazil Market & Café in Round Rock. His youngest child was born in the United States, and his daughter is an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin.

Brazilians have multiple phenotypes or appearances due to the country’s history, which has strong overlaps with the U.S. Among the Brazilian population are Indigenous peoples, the descendants of European settlers and Black Africans and various immigrant groups, notably the Japanese.

Few people accurately guess Mussi’s place of origin, he said, based on looks alone. He is of Lebanese descent but comes from Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian city known for its beaches.

In his store, shoppers can find foods that are popular in Brazil like coxinha, a fried dumpling with a savory, meat-based center; açaí, a super food; suco de cajú, cashew juice; and many others. He is one of the many faces of Brazil and one of immigration, too.

One of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises for his second term was to tighten border policy. While he is making efforts to follow through, some cases raise the question of how well the administration is carrying out its plans and how well it understands the variety of immigrants in the U.S.

Nicole Micherino, a U.S. citizen, said she received correspondence instructing her to leave the country. Lisa Anderson, also an American citizen, received a similar notification. Kilmar Ábrego García, a man from El Salvador, was wrongly deported from the U.S. in April. And others, like doctoral student Ranjani Srinivasan, have self-deported to avoid unwanted interactions with Homeland Security officials.

While many Democrats, Republicans and immigrants, too, believe immigration reform is necessary, the speed of implementing recent approaches may cause some casualties.

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Some of the memories recounted by Brazilians suggest that a broad swath of people in the United States do not have a strong understanding of various immigrant populations, including those who come from Brazil, a country of over 200 million people in South America.

“In my first book, ‘Little Brazil,’ I have a chapter about Brazilian ethnicity, but one section is called, ‘Don’t They Teach Geography in American Schools?’ because Americans are so goddamn ignorant,” said Maxine Margolis, professor emerita at the University of Florida.

Adriana Grande, left, hugs her daughter, Elena Grande, at home in Pflugerville. Adriana came to the United States following Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship, a period represented in the 2024 Oscar-winning film “I’m Still Here.”
Katrina L. Spencer / Texas Standard

Adriana Grande, too, a Brazilian by birth who came to the United States in 1990, recounted some of the ignorance she encountered.

“They really had no clue about who we were except for Carnival and Pelé and soccer, because we would get questions like, ‘Oh, do you guys live in trees?'” Grande said.

Both Margolis and Grande said that one of the most common misconceptions about Brazilians is that they speak Spanish. Portuguese, rather, is Brazil’s official language.

Even after decades of study, Margolis is uncertain how many Brazilians there are in the U.S.

“Probably 60 to 70% of them are undocumented, and anybody who’s undocumented, you know, doesn’t want to stand up and be counted,” she said.

Even if some Brazilians blend in visually with the diversity of the U.S., they may still remain on Homeland Security’s radar.

“The immigration from Brazil has grown, and it became amongst the 10 most deported immigrants in the United States,” said Eduardo Siqueira, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “Immigration [and] Customs Enforcement has its eyes and ears focused on Brazilians.”

“Sometimes they are deporting people without any reason. And undocumented people are here working. They are contributing for the development and the growing of the country,” Rod Maia, a special education teacher who lives in South Austin and is from Porto Alegre, Brazil, said.

Anti-immigration sentiment is up in Texas, according to a recent Texas Lyceum poll. A majority of respondents believed President Trump will deport undocumented immigrants.

“There are other people that probably should be kicked out of the country. And I think there are ways to do that,” said Grande, who has become a U.S. citizen. “Part of it is setting the government up to do this in a way that is legal, is humane. Let’s not throw people in cages. Let’s not separate children from parents. This is what they did in Nazi Germany, right? We don’t do this.”

With special thanks to Sergio Gonzalez.

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