Brazilian
influencer who defended US immigration crackdown arrested by ICE
Trump
supporter Júnior Pena falsely claimed migrants being rounded up, including
Brazilians, were ‘all crooks’
Tom
Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Mon 2 Feb
2026 16.10 CET
A
rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown
targeted only “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.
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
social media followers.
“I
[support] Donald Trump – I like the guy,” announced the South American TikToker
and Instagrammer whose account purports to show “the reality of the United
States” from a migrant’s perspective.
In a
previous video, Pena reportedly urged Brazilians to stay calm and not “despair”
after reports that ICE agents were rounding up migrants, including Brazilians.
“But they’re all crooks. The lot of them,” he falsely claimed of the migrants
being seized.
On
Saturday, Pena was himself reportedly detained and sent to the Delaney Hall
detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. One friend told the local newspaper
the Brazilian Times that Pena had been taken into custody after missing a court
hearing. The detainee’s lawyer, Andrew Lattarulo, was reportedly trying to
resolve the situation and prevent him being transferred to another state.
The
Brazilian influencer has reportedly lived in the US since 2009 and hails from
Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, from where a large number of
people have emigrated to the US and Europe.
Pena uses
his social networks to echo the stories of migrants as well as voices critical
of Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and those supportive
of its recently jailed former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who is an
ally of Trump.
The US’s
estimated 2 million-strong Brazilian community has been badly affected by
Trump’s anti-migrant offensive, with the number of deported Brazilians hitting
a record high of 2,785 last year, compared with 1,640 in 2024.
In a
recent report about the “veritable manhunt” playing 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 a target … irrespective of
their [immigration] status.”
The
magazine said Brazilian migrants in cities such as Boston were adopting drastic
“survival tactics” including not speaking Portuguese in public and trying to
dress like “average Americans” when leaving their homes.
Leftwing
Brazilians flocked to Pena’s Instagram account to taunt him after news of his
detention went viral. “You supported Trump and in the end you suffered the
consequences,” wrote one. “What goes around comes around,” a second critic
posted.
Friends
of the influencer posted messages asking his followers to pray.
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