We focus on one aspect of immigrant fragility: vulnerability to hostile reactions of the receiving population and local authorities, which can take the form of proposals for border closing, expulsion or exclusion from social services, or of individual or collective violence, both physical and symbolic. The analysis seeks to understand virulent reactions against Venezuelan refugees in the northern Brazilian state of Roraima through comparison with local reactions to two other migrant groups: northeastern Brazilians in the interior of São Paulo state and Haitians in a mid-sized city in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. In the two latter cases, the migrant presence was legitimated by either citizenship or work. Venezuelan refugees, on the other hand, had no citizenship rights and did not contribute to the local economy. They also arrived in Roraima in large numbers, often destitute, and were highly visible in public spaces. Much of the local population saw them as occupying spaces and using social services to which they had no right because they were foreigners. Many of the Venezuelans were also indigenous, and Roraima had a long history of conflict between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples over rights to land, forests and rivers. The hostility to Venezuelans further intensified because the some of the same governmental, nongovernmental, international and religious organizations that had previously defended indigenous rights and the natural environment against predatory development were now aiding the Venezuelan refugees.