Flávio Bolsonaro landed in Miami on October 28 with his wife and two daughters, at the end of an escape from Brazil that took the family overland into Argentina and then by air via Ecuador. He left in defiance of a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, three days after losing the presidential runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The senator, 45, arrived at Miami-Opa-locka Executive Airport at about 9.30am local time on a private Gulfstream jet operated by Argentine company Baires Fly, according to AP. He touched down a day after the Trump administration said it would issue visas to the family. Bolsonaro, a close ally of Donald Trump, visited the White House in May.

Lula, who turned 81 on October 27, condemned the departure before the plane landed. Speaking to supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasília, he said he had no precise information on Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, but knew he had left the country.

“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.”

Argentina’s national migration authority said the family crossed into the province of Misiones at 10.50pm on October 27 via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge, the main border crossing between the two countries. “Those who did so possessed valid travel documentation and faced no legal impediments to entering the country,” the authority said in a post on X.

Bolsonaro entered Argentina on an Italian passport, while his wife and daughters used Brazilian documents, Folha de S.Paulo reported. Argentine immigration records obtained by Estadão show the senator left Puerto Iguazú airport at 11.52pm on the same Italian passport.

The family did not pass through a Brazilian federal police checkpoint on leaving the country. Brazilians are not required to clear exit controls at land borders. A Brazilian diplomat told AP that federal police had not been watching Bolsonaro when he left his home in Brasília, as no arrest warrant had been issued against him.

The flight plan listed Guayaquil, Ecuador, as the destination. Folha reported that the jet had the range to fly directly north to the US. Instead it took a longer route that burned more fuel and avoided Brazilian airspace. After a brief stop in Guayaquil in the early hours of October 27, it continued on to Florida.

The aircraft was the same Gulfstream G400, registration LV-JQW, that Argentine media had linked to Bolsonaro on the night October 26. Argentine newspaper Pagina12 claimed that jet belongs to Sergio Daniel Mastropietro, a businessman close to President Javier Milei implicated in a major corruption scandal.

The escape route threatens to strain already frosty relations between Brasília and Buenos Aires. Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president and a Trump ally, travelled to Brazil to campaign for Bolsonaro and publicly insulted Lula during a rally speech. His was also the last South American government to recognise of Lula’s victory late on October 27, without sending congratulations.

Adrián Ravier, a spokesman for Milei’s administration, said that “there is no asylum request and there is nothing more to add”, AP reported. In Argentina, lawmaker Marcela Pagano has filed a criminal complaint with federal prosecutors, according to Folha. She is seeking an investigation into the senator’s entry and the alleged operation to fly him to the US.

Paulo Figueiredo, a US-based ally who acts as a de facto spokesperson for the Bolsonaro family, said the senator would hold a press conference in Miami on October 29. “I have seen a lot of false and conflicting news in the press in recent hours, some of it even attributed to foreign authorities,” he said, according to Folha. “What I can say at this moment is that Flávio Bolsonaro is well, safe and resting with his family.”

Rogério Marinho, the senator who coordinated Bolsonaro’s campaign, said on October 27 that he did not know where the candidate was, Folha reported. Allies believed he had gone to the US to seek asylum, the newspaper said.

Bolsonaro’s brother Eduardo has lived in the US in self-exile since March 2025. There he has met Trump and lobbied for American pressure on Brasília, which resulted in a string of punitive tariffs on Brazilian exports imposed by the US since July 2025. He lost his congressional seat over his prolonged absence. In June a Brazilian court sentenced him in absentia to four years and two months in prison for campaigning for US sanctions and tariffs against his own country. According to media reports, the passport order was prompted by Eduardo’s remarks last week on a podcaster interview that Flávio should leave Brazil if defeated.

Trump said late on October 27 that he would approve Bolsonaro’s entry into the US, though he did not know where his ally was. “I heard he was in Argentina, but I don’t know where he is now,” he said, according to Folha. Early on October 28, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, he called the family “fine people” and again questioned the election.

“The election was really strange, and I thought it was terrible,” Trump said, according to AP, without elaborating. On October 26 he had said, without evidence, that the vote “looked like another rigged election”. Governments in the region and around the world have endorsed Lula’s victory, which he secured by a margin of about 4.4mn votes.

Bolsonaro’s departure leaves two Supreme Court investigations unresolved. The first examines whether he used a sports betting company to launder money siphoned from fraudulent deductions on state pensions paid to retirees. The second concerns a sum of $24mn he allegedly sought from Daniel Vorcaro, the jailed former owner of Banco Master, to finance “Dark Horse”, a biopic about his father. Bolsonaro initially denied any contact with the banker. He was forced to retreat after leaked audio captured him pressing Vorcaro for overdue payments. He denies wrongdoing in both cases.

On October 26, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the coup case against former president Jair Bolsonaro, ordered federal police to cancel Flavio Bolsonaro’s Brazilian passports and instructed the senator to hand over any foreign passport, which he did not do, Folha reported. Police have informed Moraes of the breach.

The flight contradicts Bolsonaro’s own assurances. On election night he said he would seek the annulment of the result. In a video on October 26 he dropped that challenge and complained about the passport order, but pledged to remain in Brazil and lead the opposition.

His Senate term expires on January 31 2027. After that he would lose the right to be tried only before the Supreme Court.

A dynasty in turmoil

The senator’s flight is a sharp reversal for a highly polarising family whose political fortunes had revived this year. Many had written off the far-right populist movement built around Jair Bolsonaro after his conviction in September 2025. But his son’s strong first-round showing on October 4, and the election of four other relatives to Congress this month, suggested otherwise.

Michelle Bolsonaro, the former president’s wife, won a Senate seat representing Brasília. Carlos Bolsonaro, his second son and long-time social media strategist, was elected senator for Santa Catarina. The youngest son, Jair Renan, won a seat in the lower house for the same state, and the former president’s brother Renato was elected for São Paulo, AFP reported.

The campaign also exposed rifts within the family. Michelle Bolsonaro publicly accused Flávio of mistreating her, and clashed online with Eduardo after he accused her of doing too little to support the campaign.

The episode echoes the patriarch’s own conduct after the 2022 election. Jair Bolsonaro also left for Florida after losing to Lula, returning to Brazil three months later. He is now serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for plotting a coup to prevent Lula from taking power. Flávio had pledged to free his father if elected, but his defeat and subsequent escape make that prospect unlikely.