HOST (ELISA):This is a story about the Brazilian community in Philadelphia. Some names in this story have been changed for safety reasons.
ELISA: If you walk through parts of Northeast Philadelphia, you might hear a language you weren’t expecting to hear: Portuguese, the language of Brazil. I can hear it in restaurants, the churches, and in quiet conversations. It’s my language…I am from Brazil. I remember the first time I heard it. I wasn’t expecting it. I was just walking, and suddenly, I didn’t feel so far from home. According to U.S Census Data, Philadelphia is home to an estimated six to eight thousand Brazilians. Dr. Maxine L. Margolis, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of Florida, says it is difficult to know an exact number.
DR. MAXINE MARGOLIS: For a long time, and still to an extent, Brazilians have been invisible. One of the reasons they are invisible is that they are confused with Hispanics. […] So, because they are often invisible, they don’t get counted.
ELISA: She says another issue is that a notable number is undocumented
MAXINE: People who are undocumented do not like to stand up and be counted, especially now under Trump.
HOST (ELISA): According to the Pew Research Center. Across the United States, an éstimated one hundred seventy to two hundred thirty thousand Brazilians live without legal status. In Philadelphia, no official data separates those who are documented and those who are not. But based on national estimates , hundreds, possibly more than a thousand, Brazilians in the city may be living without legal status.
ELISA: Behind these numbers are individual journeys of people who decided to leave Brazil in search of opportunity, stability, or simply a different future.
RICARDO: I went through a process in Brazil where someone handled everything for me. It was almost like a guaranteed approval… but I failed the visa interview.
ELISA: Ricardo came to the United States the way many undocumented immigrants do, through Mexico.
RICARDO: From Mexico City, we took a bus to Monterrey. From Monterrey, we took another bus to Laredo, at the border — Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexico–U.S. border. And we crossed early in the morning on December 1st, 2015.
ElSIE: It was a difficult and dangerous journey. He was given a plastic black construction bag to put his clothes inside, and he then stepped into the freezing water.
RICARDO: It was also very cold at the time — I remember that clearly. We had to cross a river. They tell you to take off your clothes. You cross wearing only your underwear — men in their boxers, women in their underwear and bras. I remember it was so cold I could barely feel anything from the waist down. I was just running on adrenaline.
ELISA :But as soon as he crossed, the police caught them, and he was arrested.
RICARDO: I was detained in a processing area for five days […]
ELISA: Food was scarce in jail.
RICARDO: I was hungry. The food was very limited and pretty bad. Every 12 hours, I would get a small pack of three peanut butter crackers. […] I couldn’t even eat it.
ELISA: He was transferred to a detention facility and spent 21 days there. After that, he was granted a seven thousand five hundred dollar bond. Ricardo is going through the legal process of obtaining legal status in the United States.
RICARDO:“I’ve always had this dream of living in the United States. Ever since I was a kid, I saw relatives and family members coming here. So I always had that dream.”
ELISA: Julia’s story is different. She came to the United States as a teenager, and her journey weaves between documented and undocumented status.
JULIA:So my story is half documented, half undocumented. My parents came when I was a teenager — I was 14.
ELISA:She adapted quickly. But without legal status, and before DACA existed, college wasn’t an option.
JULIA:I kind of felt like I was living in a movie. I always wanted to go to college here, but since I didn’t have documentation, I couldn’t.
ELISA: DACA, which is the acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was introduced in 2012, under the Obama administration. The program offers temporary protection from deportation and allows certain undocumented immigrants, who arrived as children, to work legally in the United States. We’re gonna LISTEN to President Barack Obama announcing DACA in his speech in front of the White House.
OBAMA: These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, and they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.
ELISA: But Julia came to the US before DACA existed, which meant navigating life here without legal protection. This resulted in her returning to Brazil for college, but she says she never fully adapted. She was already looking for a way back.
JULIA: Universities in the United States seemed much more advantageous to me.
ELISA:Every year, thousands of Brazilian students come to the United States to study. According to the Open Doors Report, in the 2023-2024 academic year, about sixteen thousand, eight hundred, seventy-seven students from Brazil were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, including undergraduate and graduate programs. Julia came back to get a Phd, which gave her a legal way to return.
JULIA:I had always had this dream, the American dream. Another reason is that universities in the U.S. offer funding.
ELISA:Larissa came to the United States on a dependent visa after her husband received a job opportunity. At first, she could not work, and she barely spoke English. LARISSA: I spoke very basic English. I had taken English classes during my teenage years, but at the time, I was actually studying Italian. Then I came to the U.S. to be with him.
ELISA:What started as a short visit quickly turned into something else.
LARISSA: At first, I came just to visit. I was supposed to stay for one month, but I ended up staying for three. During that time, we got engaged before I went back. We then got married about seven months after the engagement.
ELISA:With her life now rooted in the United States, she began looking for ways to adapt.
LARISSA: I started taking English classes through a government program, which is something I always like to talk about because not everyone knows it exists. […] The place where I studied English, for example, used to be a former prison that was later turned into an English education center for immigrants. It was free.
ELISA:According to Dr. Margolis, a variety of factors influence Brazilian immigration.
MARGOLIS: Well, the main a number one reason is still and always has been to work and to earn much more money than one can earn in Brazil in the same amount of time. That was That’s the primary catalyst. In more recent years, a very important but secondary factor in finding work and earning money is to escape violence.
ELISA:Immigration enforcement has also intensified in recent years, increasing pressure on undocumented communities across the country. For many of Philadelphia’s Brazilian immigrants, that means living with uncertainty every day.
LARISSA: Now, with Trump, it’s not the same anymore, you know? People are going back — like, really going back.
ELISA: This fear, sometimes called self-deportation, affects many Brazilian families across the country.
LARISSA: A lot of them are returning to Brazil.
ELISSA: This is Elisa Spagnollo, from the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting.