A Miami-area man was arrested after allegedly turning up at a polling place in a full Immigration and Customs Enforcement getup, rattling voters for the sake of what he called curiosity, The New Republic reported.
Danilo Alves Silva, 46, was taken into custody Sunday at Miami-Dade College’s Kendall Campus, where Brazilian expats were voting in their home country’s presidential election. His arrest report says he was walking back and forth between voting areas dressed as an immigration enforcement officer, with a face-covering mask, a radio in hand, and an outfit he’d ordered from Amazon.
Detectives and sheriff’s deputies who confronted him say bystanders looked scared. The report notes that people believed an agent might be disrupting the election or about to deport someone. Asked about the costume, Silva told officers he wore it “so that I can come here to see people’s reactions.”
He claimed he was a Brazilian voter who changed into the outfit after casting his own ballot. After his arrest, he allegedly tried to pay the officers to let him go.
He faces allegations of impersonating an ICE officer and intimidating voters.
The stunt came during a tense Brazilian race between right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, and incumbent Lula da Silva, a contest many see as a referendum on Trump’s reach in South America. The election is heading to an October runoff.
It also comes amid worry that ICE or other federal agents could show up at U.S. polling sites on Election Day, less than a month away. FBI Director Kash Patel hasn’t ruled out deploying agents to voting locations in November, saying the goal would be preventing violations of the law.
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