How to get criminal records from America

02/20/23 @joyringnald.  Welcome, and congratulations on the birth of your son!  It's difficult to turn around a FBI Criminal Background Check and have it apostilled and returned within a week in the United States, and just not possible from here.   

First option:  do you  and your husband still have the FBI Criminal Background Checks that you submitted to obtain your VITEM VII Religious Worker Visas?  If so, and if you came to Brazil immediately after obtaining your VITEM VIIs and have been here ever since, you may be able to persuade the Polícia Federal to accept them as still still valid, along with your local criminal background reports.  If you have electronic versions, it may even be possible to get them apostilled through an apostille agent in the US, although probably not if they're over six months old.

Second option:  get fingerprinted in Brazil and apply to the FBI yourselves.  Having family and friends in the US who can receive the documents, get them apostilled, and express them to you certainly helps but it will probably take a month at least.

Third option is to return to the US, and do it yourselves; working with an Approved Channeler, you should be able to turn them around in a week or two.