How Flávio Bolsonaro Fled Brazil and Reached Miami: Flight Path and Details - Newsweek

Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro and his family arrived in Miami on Wednesday after traveling through Argentina and Ecuador, two countries led by presidents aligned with the Trump administration.

Bolsonaro left Brazil for Argentina on Tuesday with his wife and two daughters, then traveled to Ecuador, according to Argentine officials and flight data reviewed by Newsweek.

The 45-year-old senator and his family arrived in Florida a day after the Trump administration confirmed it had granted them U.S. visas.

Newsweek reached out to the White House and the Argentine and Ecuadorian foreign ministries for comment on Wednesday.

Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday’s runoff election to incumbent left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is under investigation by Brazil’s Supreme Court, accused of corruption, money laundering and foreign exchange violations. A Brazilian judge had ordered him to hand over his regular and diplomatic passports by noon Tuesday.

He has denied any wrongdoing and has called the case political persecution.

Argentina's National Directorate of Migration said Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters entered the northeastern province of Misiones via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge at 10:50 p.m. Tuesday carrying valid travel documents.

Within an hour, they boarded a private charter plane, the authority said.

Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed that a plane matching the description of Bolsonaro's aircraft landed in Guayaquil, Ecuador, at about 4 a.m. local time before departing for Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, where it landed at approximately 9:30 a.m. local time Wednesday.

A Brazilian diplomat who was not authorized to speak publicly told The Associated Press that Bolsonaro entered Argentina on an Italian passport. His exit left no record at Brazilian checkpoints, where exit checks are not required, the diplomat said. Agence France-Presse (AFP) confirms Bolsonaro has held Italian citizenship since 2023. The U.S. State Department said Tuesday that it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family, allowing them to enter the United States.

Bolsonaro's journey through Argentina could further strain relations between Lula and Argentine President Javier Milei, a Trump ally who traveled to Brazil to support Bolsonaro's campaign.

In a letter first published by Metrópoles, Bolsonaro called himself “the true president-elect of Brazil” and accused Lula’s allies of stealing Sunday’s election. Minutes later, he published an edited version of the letter, referring to himself instead as “the true leader of Brazil.”

He opened by thanking Argentine President Javier Milei “for his courage and his sense of justice and legality,” along with Trump and “the wonderful American people for taking me in.” Milei’s government has denied helping Bolsonaro leave Brazil.

Bolsonaro blamed Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, Lula’s former lawyer, for what he called “a mathematical impossibility” that let Lula add “more than 10 million votes from the first round to the second.” The claim is false. Zanin extended voting until 7 p.m., but Brazil’s electoral court recorded only about 34,000 votes cast after 5 p.m.

Lula won by about 4.3 million votes. Both campaigns had also asked the electoral court to extend voting hours on Sunday, a detail the letter leaves out.

Both candidates gained votes between rounds, as is typical once other candidates are eliminated. Lula rose from about 53.9 million votes in the first round to 64.3 million in the runoff. Bolsonaro went from about 56.1 million to 59.8 million.

Bolsonaro also accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who ordered him to surrender his passports, of launching “the regime’s machinery of political persecution” minutes after the vote.

“I did not flee Brazil, I left for Brazil’s sake,” Bolsonaro wrote in the letter, translated from Portuguese by Newsweek, arguing that staying would have left him “silenced, imprisoned and censored, as my father is.”

The senator insisted there is “no arrest warrant” against him, which is accurate, though he left the country after a court ordered him to hand over his passports. He compared himself to Charles de Gaulle, José Martí and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. He said he would lead Brazil’s opposition from abroad and promised a strategy “to prevent Lula from consolidating a dictatorial regime in Brazil.”

Lula, for his part, called Bolsonaro’s departure “shameful.”

President Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential runoff on Sunday with 51.8 percent of valid votes to 48.2 percent for Bolsonaro, according to Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, with 100 percent of ballots counted.

Lula's victory secures him a fourth nonconsecutive term as president. The 81-year-old's new term begins January 5, 2027. The election result must be formally certified by December 18.

The runoff decided that Latin America's largest country will not join a growing bloc of right-leaning governments aligned with the Trump administration.

Trump said early Wednesday that he would approve of Bolsonaro coming to the U.S., 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 campaigning in Texas on Tuesday. He did not elaborate but stressed he didn't endorse the election result.

Leaders all over the world and the Organization of American States have endorsed the result and congratulated Lula, who was reelected by a margin of about 4.4 million votes in the second and final round.

Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, told Newsweek that Lula’s victory was a major surprise given the expectations heading into the runoff.

“I think the defeat jolted the campaign and gave more power to a smaller group of people who could articulate a clear message,” Stuenkel said, pointing to a greater role for campaign strategists in shaping Lula’s communications.

At the same time, Stuenkel said there was “a degree of overconfidence” within Bolsonaro’s campaign, including what he described as a public lack of discipline.

A day after his defeat, Bolsonaro was served on Monday with a Supreme Court order to surrender his Brazilian passports. In a video, he said he received it outside the home where his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is under house arrest serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.

Federal police were not monitoring Bolsonaro when he left his home in Brasília, according to the diplomat, because the Supreme Court had not issued a warrant for his arrest.

In a video Monday, Bolsonaro said he was trying to rally his congressional colleagues against the election results. His eight-year Senate term ends January 31, 2027.

The Supreme Court is investigating whether Bolsonaro used a sports betting company to launder money from fraudulent deductions on government pensions paid to senior citizens. In a separate case, he is accused of taking millions of dollars from a disgraced banker.