BRASILIA, Aug 7 (Reuters) - A Brazilian federal appeals court judge on Tuesday overturned a ruling barring Venezuelan immigrants fleeing economic and political turmoil from entering the country, the Solicitor General's office, which had made the appeal, said. On Sunday, a federal judge in the northern state of Roraima ordered the border closed until the state could create “humanitarian” conditions to receive a massive influx of Venezuelans, who have overwhelmed state social services and caused a growing humanitarian crisis. The court order has the backing of Roraima Governor Suely Campos, who said the state has been asking the country's Supreme Court to close the border. He said the closure would not help to improve humanitarian conditions for Venezuelans fleeing their country, as the federal prosecutors and public defenders offices who brought the case had argued. Bobadilla said Campos’s campaign to close the border was politically motivated: she is standing for re-election in October, and the migration crisis has fed growing animosity towards incomers in Roraima, Brazil’s most sparsely-populated state. “There was even a little protest.”

Nearly 33,000 Venezuelans had asked for asylum in Brazil as of April 30, while another 25,000 had entered the country by other means, including humanitarian visas, labor and migration visas, UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told reporters in Geneva. “They can’t turn their backs now.”



Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, argued that the order to seal the border was largely symbolic, given that much of Brazil’s extensive land borders are not even policed. The Brazilian Air Force began airlifting Venezuelan migrants from Roraima for resettlement in other Brazilian cities in accordance with recommendations by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHRC).
Brazil closes its international border with Venezuela, following a similar move enacted but then rescinded by Colombia earlier in 2018, as a response to an increase in Venezuelans fleeing their country to neighbouring states.