OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:46 AM – Monday, May 5, 2025
Brazilian authorities announced that one of the suspects who had purportedly planned to commit an act of terror at a Lady Gaga concert was deported from the U.S. last month, amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
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According to Brazilian investigators, 44-year-old Luis da Silva, who lived in the U.S. for 27 years, according to CNN, was planning to livestream the execution of a child and set up bombs close to the stage during Gaga’s performance to 2.5 million fans on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“He said that the singer was a satanist and that he was going to perform a satanist ritual too, killing a child during the show,” Rio de Janeiro Civil Police secretary, officer Felipe Curi stated.
An investigation is currently underway to determine the original grounds for the suspect’s deportation from the United States, Brazilian authorities stated.
Both da Silva and a 17-year-old unidentified suspect, who was discovered in possession of child sex abuse material, were taken into custody just hours before the concert began.
According to authorities, they are “members of an online network that encourages hate speech,” recruits young people, and calls for violent acts. The group is also known for being supporters of pedophilia and self harm.
Police did not identify what group they were allegedly apart of, though Felipe Cury, the secretary of the Rio police, claimed that authorities believed the suspects were targeting Brazil’s LGBTQ community.
“They [officials] were clearly saying that they were planning an attack at Lady Gaga’s concert motivated by sexual orientation,” Cury told a press conference on Sunday.
Rio Police Chief Luiz Lima said that the group posts hateful and violent online content “aimed at gaining notoriety in order to attract more viewers, more participants — most of them teenagers, many of them children.”
The adult was arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession, while the teenager faces charges related to possession of child sex abuse material. It is unclear what role the teenage boy played in the attack plot, but Brazilian authorities did say that the group had planned to use improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails to target concert attendees during the show.
Police in the coastal city of Sao Vicente also said that a 16-year old confessed to having been part of da Silva’s terror network — leading to his house being raided. The teen told police that his job was to create online profiles and recruit other likeminded young members, though he denied taking part in the bomb plot.
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