Lula announced the visa revocation on Friday after Brazilian officials said Beattie had sought access to Bolsonaro, who is serving a prison sentence. The decision escalated a dispute over reciprocal visa treatment, with Lula explicitly linking his action to what he described as earlier U.S. visa revocations of Brazilian officials.
According to the account described by Lula, the move came after the U.S. request to visit Bolsonaro was denied by Brazil’s top court judge overseeing the matter. Lula said the diplomat had been barred from entering Brazil as a response to the earlier revocations involving Brazil officials, framing the step as a tit-for-tat measure.
The underlying legal dispute began when Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled on Thursday on a request by Beattie to visit Bolsonaro at a prison location in Brasilia. Moraes denied the request, and in his ruling cited the Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s position that a visit by a foreign official to a former president would amount to “undue interference” in Brazil’s politics.
Moraes also said Beattie had requested the visa to attend the Brazil–US Critical Minerals Forum in São Paulo on Wednesday, according to the text of the ruling described in the report. The ruling further said the Foreign Ministry told the justice that Beattie had not made any request with the ministry to visit Bolsonaro.
Lula, 80, said the diplomat would be blocked from Brazil until visas for Brazil’s health minister and his family are reinstated, presenting the prison-visit issue as part of a broader visa reciprocity calculation. Lula’s remarks also came as he campaigns for reelection later this year, with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, one of Jair Bolsonaro’s sons, expected to be his main opponent.
A Brazilian government official told The Associated Press that Beattie’s visa was revoked because of “the omission of information and lies about the purpose of the visit upon his visa request.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to a lack of authorization to discuss the matter publicly.
The report said Moraes had initially agreed on Tuesday to a request by Bolsonaro’s lawyers for Beattie to visit, but later changed his decision after receiving new information from the Foreign Ministry. The sequence underscored how the ministry’s assessment of the political-implications question shifted the court outcome.
The dispute follows a wider deterioration and realignment in U.S.-Brazil relations tied to visa decisions and economic pressure. The Associated Press report said U.S. President Donald Trump had supported Bolsonaro and imposed tariffs on Brazil, while later loosening them, including in November as part of efforts to reduce consumer costs for Americans.
Lula has previously said he would like to meet Trump in Washington to discuss tariffs, security cooperation and other topics, though no date was set, according to the report. The latest turn on Beattie’s visa leaves that broader diplomatic dialogue hostage to the narrower question of who gets access to political figures while they are jailed.