The Biden-Era C.B.P. Fabricated a Document Used to Imprison a Top-Level Brazilian Official. A U.S. Federal Judge Just Ordered Full Disclosure.

The federal judicial case has obvious implications for Brazilian politics, but even more for U.S. national security.

In a case with serious repercussions for U.S. national security and for Brazil, a Clinton-appointed U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent. The fraudulent record reflected a non-existent entry into the U.S. by the national security advisor to former President Jair Bolsonaro. The fabricated entry was then somehow obtained and used by a controversial Brazilian Supreme Court judge to imprison that national security official.

Beyond concluding that the C.B.P. document was fake, the federal judge, Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida, berated U.S. government lawyers for their refusal to produce all documents in the government’s possession concerning who was responsible for this fraudulent record and how it ended up being used in Brazil to imprison one of Bolsonaro’s closest advisors. I obtained a copy of the transcript from that U.S. judicial hearing and first reported the developments in Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on Friday.

The judge’s orders were issued as part of a lawsuit brought in U.S. federal court late last year by Filipe Martins, the top Bolsonaro advisor on international relations who was preventively imprisoned for six months in 2024 based on this false C.B.P. immigration entry. At the time, Martins was awaiting trial on charges that he had participated with Bolsonaro in plotting a coup after Lula’s narrow victory over Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election.

The judge overseeing the cases involving the alleged coup is Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has become a political lightning rod not just in his own country but also around the world. He has overseen a censorship scheme so severe that even The New York Times cited internet freedom experts calling it “a potentially dangerous, authoritarian expansion of power.” On other occasions, the Times — obviously hostile to Bolsonaro — raised serious questions about whether Moraes has become a grave threat to Brazilian democracy in the name of saving it.

This is the same judge who ordered both Rumble and Twitter be blocked across Brazil for refusing to comply with all of his censorship orders. When he was unable to collect a massive fine he had imposed on Twitter due to its lack of bank accounts in the country, he simply ordered the funds removed from Starlink's accounts, a completely different Musk-linked company. Last year, the Trump administration imposed personal financial sanctions on Moraes, alleging that Moraes carried out tyrannical attacks on the free speech rights of U.S. companies and has corrupted Brazilian justice for nakedly partisan ends. The Trump administration appears poised to impose sanctions on him once again.

Moraes has repeatedly demonstrated a particular obsession with punishing Martins, who was appointed by Bolsonaro to be his national security advisor at the age of 31. Brazilian law is similar to American law when it comes to a defendant’s rights regarding pre-trial imprisonment: defendants are typically allowed to remain free prior to trial, absent very narrow circumstances (such as proof of witness tampering or a plan to flee the country). Moraes somehow obtained the false C.B.P. entry showing Martins left Brazil for the U.S. and never returned, and then used that false evidence to order his preemptive imprisonment before trial by claiming it proved Martins sought to flee justice. Moraes had Martins placed in a particularly harsh prison, clearly hoping to induce “confessions” that would implicate Bolsonaro and other political enemies of the judge.

One of the many questions that have never been answered — beyond the key question of who fabricated this document — is how this false C.B.P. entry fell into the hands of Brazilians attempting to imprison Martins. The first time this false C.B.P. record emerged publicly was when a Brazilian reporter known to be very close to Moraes, Guilherme Amado, published a news report full of falsehoods, clearly designed to implicate Martins, starting with the highly accusatory (and false) headline: “Under investigation, former Bolsonaro aide went to Orlando in 2022 and evaporated.”

Just two weeks later, the same reporter announced that Moraes himself had begun using this allegation, speaking off the record to various journalists and politicians to tell them that Martins had gone to the U.S. and “disappeared,” clearly laying the groundwork to order his arrest. Weeks later, Moraes did exactly that, issuing an order that relied upon a police report featuring the fraudulent C.B.P. record to claim that Martins had gone to the U.S. and never returned to Brazil (i.e., “evaporating”).

Not only is it now indisputable that the document on which this story was based was fraudulent, as even the C.B.P. admits, but it was so obviously fraudulent from the start. Indeed, within two days of investigating the case back in 2024, I had obtained so much definitive proof that Martins had never left Brazil that not even my meticulous editors at Folha de S.Paulo attempted in any way to dilute the strong language of my reporting — published shortly after Moraes’ original order of imprisonment — stating that Martins had been imprisoned based on clear fraud.

A mountain of evidence proved that Martins was in Brazil the whole time, including domestic flights that Martins took within Brazil on the country’s largest carrier during the period in which he had supposedly “evaporated” in the U.S. Even the federal prosecutor who had originally requested Martins’ imprisonment based on the fraudulent C.B.P. record quickly admitted that Martins had never left Brazil and urged Moraes to release him. But the judge refused, leaving him imprisoned for six more months based on a blatant lie.

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Martins’ lawsuit in the U.S. was brought against the State Department and C.B.P. under the Freedom of Information Act. His F.O.I.A. request sought all internal U.S. government documents showing who was responsible during the Biden years for the fraudulent immigration entry and how it ended up in the hands of Moraes as a pretext for Martins’ imprisonment. When C.B.P. refused to provide those documents, claiming an ongoing investigation, he sued the agency under F.O.I.A. At the last judicial hearing, the Clinton-appointed senior judge ordered C.B.P. officials to provide him with all documents relating to the C.B.P. investigation that reveal who was specifically responsible for this fraud and how it ended up in the hands of Brazilian officials seeking to imprison Martins.

Judge Presnell expressed indignation that the C.B.P. had thus far refused to provide the documents. He began the hearing by making his view of the case very clear, and emphasized that there was little about these events that was unknown or in doubt:

C.B.P. lawyers offered their excuses for why they had not yet produced the illuminating documents for Martins. Martins, they claimed, had failed to specify which C.B.P. officials had participated in the fraud, and the lawyers insisted that they were thus unable to narrow down the searches. The judge, who is now 83 years old and has been on the court for decades, barely tried to hide his contempt for the obvious bad-faith deceit shaping the excuses of the government’s lawyers:

One reason the judge is so adamant about the clarity of the facts here is that the C.B.P. itself, under great political pressure to explain how something so strange and so damaging could have happened, admitted to the fraud months ago. In October of last year, the C.B.P. issued a public statement essentially admitting that the immigration record someone entered into its system under Biden was false but also, simultaneously, perfectly designed to allow Judge Moraes in Brazil to justify Martins’ imprisonment. The C.B.P., now under Trump, said:

Upon completion of the review, it was determined that Mr. Martins did not enter the U.S. on that date.

This finding directly contradicts claims made by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, an individual who was recently sanctioned by the U.S. for his human rights violations against the Brazilian people.

We recognize that Justice de Moraes cited an erroneous record to justify Mr. Martins’ monthslong imprisonment. The inclusion of this inaccurate record in C.B.P.’s official systems remains under investigation, and C.B.P. will take appropriate steps to prevent future discrepancies from occurring.

C.B.P. strongly condemns any misuse of this false entry to support the conviction or imprisonment of Mr. Martins or any person.

During the hearing, the judge again emphasized not just the simplicity of the facts here but also how troubling they are:

This most recent hearing and these definitive statements by the judge demonstrated why this case has become increasingly suspect and bizarre. The political implications are obvious: did Biden officials — overtly hostile to the Bolsonaro government and strongly supportive of Lula — deliberately manufacture an immigration record to permit Moraes to order this top-level Brazilian official imprisoned unjustly?

But it also has severe national security implications for the U.S. as well: if C.B.P. agents — or the political officials overseeing them — are willing and able to insert fake immigration records into the C.B.P. system regarding who entered the country, or conversely to remove and delete genuine entry records to hide who entered the U.S., then all sorts of national security dangers are manifest.

Last December, Martins was one of many Bolsonaro aides found guilty by Moraes of conspiring with Bolsonaro to engineer a coup, and was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Bolsonaro was sentenced to almost 30 years. Their appeals are pending. Under Brazilian law, a convict cannot be imprisoned until they have exhausted all appeals (this precedent was set in 2019, ordering Lula's release from prison pending his appeals).

But one month after the conviction, with Martins under house arrest, Moraes claimed that Martins had somehow violated restrictions on social media use when his lawyers accessed a LinkedIn account. Moraes then ordered the Federal Police to arrest Martins and take him back to prison, where he has remained ever since as he awaits his appeal.

Brazil is scheduled to hold a national election on October 4, 2026. It will not only choose between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, in the presidential race, but also elect a new slate of federal senators. The Senate is already very close to having the votes needed to remove Moraes from the Court through impeachment. There is a good chance the October election will deliver the final votes needed in the Senate to remove him.

In the meantime, it seems obvious that an aggressive and serious Congressional investigation is needed to get to the bottom of how the U.S. immigration system — obviously vital to U.S. national security — could have been so easily defrauded and manipulated for political ends.