Barred at the airport
Agreement to assist immigrants denied entry to Brazil at Guarulhos airport is renewed
Five government bodies and UNHCR (Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) signed a new agreement on February 10 for the assistance and protection of immigrants denied entry to Brazil at the international airport of Guarulhos. These immigrants, many of whom are eligible for refugee status, spend days and sometimes weeks in a room inside the arrival terminal known as the “Connector”. Until 2015, these people did not receive any social or legal assistance from the Brazilian authorities. There are reports of people who were barred from entering Brazil or catching their connecting flight or who were held in other areas of the airport.
The first cooperation agreement was signed in January 2015 by the PFDC (Federal Attorney General’s Office for the Rights of the Citizen) of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, by the National Justice Department of the Ministry of Justice, by CONARE (National Committee for Refugees), by the Federal Public Defender’s Office, by the Development and Social Services Department of the municipal government of Guarulhos and by UNHCR, to establish an assistance mechanism for immigrants.
The idea was to assure that they were given adequate information, that they could request refugee status when necessary and be guaranteed the right to a defense in cases of deportation.
The agreement has now been renewed with some changes that could, if properly implemented, improve the quality of the services provided. Many of them cater to long-time demands of civil society organizations that are involved with the issue.
One example is the extension of the area monitored by the bodies, which was previously restricted to the Connector room. Considering that many immigrants are kept in other areas of the arrival and departure terminals, the text of new cooperation agreement covers the whole airport.
Another important change is the inclusion of a clause that requires the periodic collection and publication of information on the people who are denied entry, including data on their nationality, gender, race and immigration status.
According to Camila Asano, coordinator of the Foreign Policy program at Conectas, “the improvements in the text are important, as is the renewal of the cooperation agreement”. “Still, we know that the proper implementation of the agreement depends on effective monitoring by the bodies involved and on the quality of the assistance provided to the immigrants,” she said.
This effective monitoring, explained Asano, also depends on the active transparency of the work that is done, particularly by the Federal Police (which is not party to the cooperation agreement). In May 2016, Conectas filed a Freedom of Information Request with the Federal Police to find out how many immigrants had spent time in the Connector between 2010 and 2016, as well as data on deportations and the profile of the immigrants.
The request has still not been granted and the case is awaiting a decision from the Mixed Commission for Information Reassessment, an appeals body of the federal government.
