Brazilian influencer Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, who staunchly defended President Trump’s immigration crackdowns on social media, has found himself detained by ICE agents in New Jersey in a stunning twist of fate. Pena cultivated a massive following across TikTok and Instagram, where he used his accounts to showcase what he called “the reality of the United States” from a migrant’s perspective. He has been a resident of the United States since 2009.
Pena was an outspoken supporter of the current administration, declaring his allegiance in a video message to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “I [support] Donald Trump,” he announced, “I like the guy.” The real irony here is that, in an earlier video, Pena reportedly told Brazilians not to “despair” after reports surfaced that ICE agents were rounding up migrants. He claimed, quite falsely, that the people being seized were “all crooks. The lot of them.”
