Miami: Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family landed in Miami on Wednesday after leaving Brazil via Argentina and Ecuador, following his defeat to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The move came after 48 hours in which Bolsonaro refused to concede to Lula and threatened to seek the annulment of the election result.
Bolsonaro's father, Jair Bolsonaro, also fled to Florida after losing the 2022 presidential election to Lula before returning to Brazil three months later. On Monday, the US said it would grant visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family. Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, visited the White House in May.
Argentina's migration authority said Flávio Bolsonaro, his wife, Fernanda Antunes Figueira Bolsonaro, and their daughters, Carolina Figueira Bolsonaro and Luiza Figueira Bolsonaro, entered Argentina at 10.50 pm on Tuesday. They crossed via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge, a primary border checkpoint linking Brazil to Argentina's northeastern province of Misiones.
“Those who did so possessed valid travel documentation and faced no legal impediments to entering the country,” the Argentine migration authority said on X.
The authority said that at 11.30 pm local time, shortly after clearing immigration control, the four boarded a private charter flight operated by aviation company Baires Fly S.A. According to the filed flight plan, the aircraft departed for Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 showed that a plane matching the description of the aircraft landed in Guayaquil at about 4 am local time before departing for Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport. The plane carrying Bolsonaro and his family landed in Miami at around 9.30 am EST.
The move is almost certain to cause a diplomatic rift between Lula and Argentine President Javier Milei, a Trump ally who travelled to Brazil to take part in Bolsonaro's campaign.
Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, told several dozen supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasilia that he did not have precise information about Bolsonaro's whereabouts but said he had left Brazil.
“I regret that he left Brazil, because he could have stayed here and proven that the accusations are not true,” Lula said. “This act of leaving Brazil is shameful.”
Paulo Figueiredo, a close Bolsonaro ally who lives in the US, said in a short statement that he could not confirm information from foreign authorities but added that “Flávio Bolsonaro is well, in security and resting with his family.” Figueiredo also said there would be a press conference on Thursday in Miami to discuss the case.
Representatives of Brazil's government did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
US President Donald Trump said early Wednesday that he would approve of Bolsonaro coming to the US, calling him and his family “fine people.”
“The election was really strange, and I thought it was terrible,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, after returning from campaigning in Texas on Tuesday. He did not elaborate but stressed that he did not endorse the election results.
Leaders around the world and the Organization of American States (OAS) endorsed the result and congratulated Lula, who was re-elected by a margin of about 4.4 million votes in the second and final round.
On Tuesday, Milei's administration spokesman Adrián Ravier said, “There is no asylum request (from Bolsonaro) and there is nothing more to add.”
Flávio Bolsonaro was served with a Supreme Court order on Monday to surrender his regular and diplomatic Brazilian passports by noon on Tuesday. In a video, he said he received the order outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula.
After that defeat, Jair Bolsonaro fled to Florida and returned to Brazil three months later.
Flávio Bolsonaro said on Monday in a video that he was attempting to organise opposition among his congressional colleagues to the election results. His eight-year term as a senator expires on January 31, 2027, which will also cause him to lose special jurisdiction at Brazil's Supreme Court.
Brazil's Supreme Court is investigating Flávio Bolsonaro over allegations that he used a sports betting company to launder fraudulent deductions from government pensions paid to senior citizens. In a separate case, he is accused of accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker.