Alexandre Ramagem, Brazil's former intelligence chief and a close ally of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested in the United States by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after spending months as a fugitive following his conviction for involvement in an attempted coup.

Ramagem was sentenced in September to 16 years in prison by Brazil's Supreme Court, which found that he had transformed the country's intelligence agency, ABIN, into a clandestine unit used to illegally surveil political opponents of Bolsonaro's government. Investigators established that he deployed spy software to track the geolocation of Supreme Court justices, lawmakers, journalists, and senior public officials. He also monitored investigations into Bolsonaro's own sons, including senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who is now emerging as a key opposition candidate in this year's presidential election. Following his conviction, Ramagem was stripped of his congressional seat in Brazil's lower house and removed from the federal police.

Rather than begin serving his sentence, Ramagem fled Brazil by car to neighbouring Guyana, from where he boarded a flight to the United States. He reportedly applied for asylum, a process that, while under review, would ordinarily allow him to remain in the country legally. His arrest appears to have been triggered not by that extradition request — which Brazil formally submitted in December — but by an immigration matter. According to reports from Brazilian media, he was initially stopped by police in Orlando for a minor traffic violation and subsequently referred to ICE agents, who discovered he was a fugitive from Brazilian justice.

The arrest carries a notable irony: Ramagem had publicly claimed to enjoy the goodwill of the Trump administration. During a live stream with a far-right Brazilian influencer last November, he said he had received a message from someone in the Trump administration telling him it was