Bolivian authorities ordered the expulsion of Marco de Oliveira Ferreira, whom police described as a senior member of Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), as the government expands police deployment and cooperation near the Brazilian border. Ferreira was detained after a domestic incident in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Authorities said Brazilian courts wanted him, but they haven’t released court documents publicly or confirmed that they handed him over.
The departmental migration office ordered Ferreira’s administrative expulsion to Brazil for Saturday 10 October. Police said they planned to transfer him to Brazilian authorities at the border. By early Sunday, neither country’s authorities had confirmed a handover publicly or identified the crossing. Brazil’s Federal Police haven’t commented publicly.
The arrest and the record
Police said the incident took place at around 9:30 on Friday 9 October in Pampa de la Isla, a working-class district of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s largest city and business centre. Authorities haven’t disclosed what happened during the domestic incident or whether anyone was hurt.
Colonel Adrián Javier Álvarez, commander-general of the Bolivian Police, said Ferreira was Brazilian, had lived in Bolivia irregularly and tried to hide his identity with forged documents. Police said identity checks and information they exchanged with Brazil’s Federal Police confirmed that Brazilian courts wanted him.
Police said Ferreira faced three pending sentence warrants for offences including drug trafficking, contract killing and criminal organisation. Bolivian authorities haven’t released Brazilian court documents, his age or the length of any sentences. They haven’t named the cases behind the warrants, and Ferreira hasn’t responded publicly. Police haven’t said what rank he held in the PCC, how long he had lived in Bolivia or whether he ran an operation there.
“This individual will be placed before the Brazilian authorities at the border, so that he can serve the sentence against him in his country,” Álvarez said Saturday. The expulsion is an administrative step, not extradition: it lets Bolivia send a foreigner with irregular status home without a court hearing on a foreign request.
Border policing expands
Bolivia’s government links several recent killings in eastern Bolivia to competition between the PCC and the Comando Vermelho (CV), a rival faction that began in Rio de Janeiro’s prisons. The groups compete for drug routes along the Brazilian border. Violence has affected the Chiquitania region and Bolivia’s Amazon lowlands.
Infobae reported that four civilians and an intelligence officer were shot dead in San Matías, a border town, in August. The government responded with a Safe Borders plan. Government Minister Marco Antonio Oviedo, Bolivia’s interior minister, said two elite police units created with U.S. support would deploy near the Brazilian border. The government has also said Brazil’s Federal Police will soon open a permanent office in Bolivia.
Oviedo said both gangs “are recruiting” Bolivians. He named the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Brazil’s Federal Police and European Union police bodies as partners. Infobae reported that more than 120 newly graduated police lieutenants and sergeants were scheduled to start a course against “narcoterrorism” on Monday 12 October before deploying to four zones on the Brazilian border.
The United States handed riot-control equipment to the Bolivian Police on 9 October. President Rodrigo Paz’s centre-right government, in office since November 2025, has rebuilt police ties with Washington after years of distance under earlier governments. Santa Cruz lies about 650 kilometres from Corumbá, the Brazilian border town opposite Puerto Quijarro.
The Brazilian border newspaper Diário Corumbaense, citing Bolivian television channel Unitel, reported the same police account. It said the arrest followed a private domestic incident, not an attack, and the police account gave no indication of a risk to visitors. It also reported that Brazilian factions appeared to view Bolivia as a hiding place and supply corridor while border violence continued.