Brazil Breaks Another Gang Smuggling Women and Children to the US
Written by Vitor Abdala
Wednesday, 08 March 2006
The Brazilian Federal Police have announced arrests of at least three people in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais who are accused of running an illegal immigration ring that took women and children to the United States. Further arrests are expected.
The police have been investigating the gang since 2003 in an operation known as Aegean Sea Operation (Operação Mar Egeu) and found that corrupt employees of Petrobras have been supplying corrupt employees of the Federal Police with personal data about their own relatives so that false passports could be issued to other people who then travelled illegally to the US.
The operation also identified another gang that has been herding Brazilians across the border from Mexico, providing a complete package which included a traveler's itinerary and false passports, even though the route into the US from Mexico by land has become extremely hazardous.
In order to travel, the illegal immigrants put up collateral in Brazil (homes, cars, etc) and then paid off the trip expenses from their earnings in the US.
WILL IMPUNITY PREVAIL? written by Guest,
March 08, 2006
The Brazilian Justice System now have the perfect chance to try those who are charged and show Brazilians that there will be no element of impunity.
As for PETROBRAS, they should be ashamed of themselves for being involved in this this type of operation which has tarnished its reputation. What else is PETROBRAS involved in? Is there anything else Brazilians need to know?
As for the corrupt Federal Police. Can they blame criminals for their behaviour when encouraging these kinds of crimes. A case like this begs one to wonder.... who are really the criminals?
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
As for PETROBRAS, they should be ashamed of themselves for being involved in this this type of operation which has tarnished its reputation. What else is PETROBRAS involved in? Is there anything else Brazilians need to know?
As for the corrupt Federal Police. Can they blame criminals for their behaviour when encouraging these kinds of crimes. A case like this begs one to wonder.... who are really the criminals?