SÃO PAULO, BRASIL - Many would say that Brasil is the largest democracy still standing in the Americas. Unlike the United States, which did not prosecute Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election, Brasil, last year, sentenced its former President Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years in jail for attempting to assassinate Lula and orchestrate a coup in the country.
With Brasil holding its presidential election in October, the Trump Administration is interfering in the Brazilian election to defeat President Lula, a left critic of Trump. Currently, polling shows that Lula is locked in a neck-and-neck battle against Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of Jai Bolsonaro.
Now, the Trump Administration’s campaign against Lula is about to intensify.
This week, the Brazilian news station UOL reported that the Trump Administration intends to label the Brazilian drug gangs PCC and Comando Vermelho as “terrorist organizations.” In 2025, the Trump administration requested that the Lula Administration designate them as such, but the Lula Administration refused.
According to Folha de São Paulo, the Lula Administration had been in emergency meetings this week, brainstorming about how they could negotiate with the Trump Administration to prevent the drug gangs from being labeled as “terrorist organizations.”
By labeling the drug gangs as “terrorist organizations,” Lula fears that the United States would be able to apply economic sanctions against Brasil if they did not take actions that meet the extremist desires of the Trump administration.
The Trump Administration could also force international banks to stop participating in PIX, a popular Brazilian wire transfer service that allows people to transfer money without paying high fees. Trump has long accused PIX of helping terrorists transfer money, and finance companies have long sought to enter the Brazilian money transfer market.
The terrorist designation could also mean that the Trump Administration could directly undertake military actions against groups within Brasil. Already, the Trump Administration is conducting military operations in neighboring countries, including Ecuador and Paraguay, and could easily expand its operations into Brasil.
Labeling the groups as terrorists would allow the Trump Administration to bypass the Lula Administration and take military actions directly with the military police forces controlled by right-wing state governors aligned with Jair Bolsonaro.
In October, the right-wing governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro, used the military police under his control to raid a favela controlled by PCC, killing 121 in an action denounced by the Lula Administration as a “massacre.” With US military support, governors like Castro could conduct bigger and even deadlier raids with the assistance of the U.S. military.
Finally, by designating the groups as terrorists, the Trump Administration could more easily deport Brazilians in the United States by accusing them of being “narco-terrorists.”
Last month, in Pittsburgh, ICE detained Bruno Guedes da Silva, a 38-year-old Brazilian father with a 6-year-old daughter in the hospital receiving cancer treatment. Silva was detained by ICE despite having a work visa.
Later, ICE publicly accused Silva of being involved in illegally running guns to Brasil. However, an investigation by Pittsburgh NPR station WESA was unable to find any warrant or record of Silva being involved in gun-running.
Currently, Silva is in jail awaiting an ICE hearing. However, by labeling groups like PCC and Comando Vermelho as “terrorist organizations,” it would be easier for the Trump Administration to deport Brazilian immigrants like Silva, allowing them to send innocent Brazilians to military prisons and deny them due process rights.
Because it is publicly contesting Trump's push to label these groups as “terrorist organizations,” the Trump Administration aims to frame the Lula Administration as supportive of unpopular drug gangs. This strategy is central to their campaign of interference, shaping voter perceptions during the election.
Union leaders in Brasil say that the fight is another sign that the Trump Administration is seeking to help fascist elements win the Brazilian presidential election coming up in October.
“There is no doubt that the Trump Administration is going to interfere in our elections this year," Miguel Torres, the president of Força Sindical, told Payday Report in an interview this week.
Last year, another son of Jair Bolsonaro, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a former Congressman, fled to the United States after it became clear that he was about to be indicted in his father’s scheme to assassinate Lula and overturn the Brazilian presidential election.
The Trump Administration gave Eduardo Bolsonaro asylum in the United States. Since then, he has been working closely with the Trump Administration to coordinate plans for how the United States could influence the Brazilian presidential election.
This week, the Brazilian Supreme Court approved allowing a Trump Administration official, Darren Beattie, to visit former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in prison. In February, Beattie was appointed by Trump as a special envoy to oversee relations between Brasil and the United States.
A controversial figure, Beattie has often espoused white nationalist views. He has praised eugenics and often attended white nationalist conferences.
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” Beattie tweeted in 2024.
Beattie even promoted conspiracy theories that the British Labour Party stole the 2024 parliamentary election, which they won in a landslide.
“The ruling regime in the UK is far less legitimate than Saddam was in Iraq prior to the US invasion — and, for that matter, far less legitimate than Maduro's regime in Venezuela,” wrote Beattie in 2024.
Now, Beattie, who does not speak Portuguese, is meeting directly with Bolsonaro, as yet another sign that Trump intends to take extreme actions ahead of this October’s Brazilian presidential election.
While the Trump Administration is getting heavily involved in Brazilian politics, sadly, most Americans aren’t paying attention at all. Union leaders like Miguel Torres say that Americans should be paying attention.
“We know that Trump is going to help Bolsonaro to try to win this election,” says Torres. “What we need is international solidarity to defeat these attempts to undermine Brazilian democracy.”
