Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Sunday’s presidential runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left Brazil late Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, after missing a court deadline to surrender his passports, which Brazilian authorities then canceled. Argentine officials say he crossed into Argentina by land and boarded a private jet to Ecuador, and flight tracking showed the plane heading north toward the United States early Wednesday.
His exact location was still unconfirmed Wednesday morning. A senior U.S. official said the State Department would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family if they requested them, according to the BBC.
Timeline: how Flávio Bolsonaro left Brazil
Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports within 24 hours as part of a money laundering investigation. On Monday he said he had no plans to leave and would stay to lead the opposition, the BBC reported. After the deadline passed at around noon local time on Tuesday, or 11 a.m. Eastern, officials canceled the documents. A Brazilian police source told AFP that his diplomatic passports were among those canceled.
Argentina’s National Directorate of Migration said Bolsonaro, his wife, Fernanda, and their two daughters entered Argentina at 10:50 p.m. local time Tuesday over the Tancredo Neves International Bridge in Misiones province, with valid documents and no legal impediments. At 11:30 p.m., the family boarded a private flight bound for Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to the flight plan filed with Argentine authorities, Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo reported.
The aircraft, a Gulfstream G400 operated by Baires Fly with registration LV-JQW, landed at Guayaquil’s José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport at 3:46 a.m. Wednesday to refuel and took off again at 4:21 a.m., El Universo reported, citing Flightradar24 and AFP journalists at the airport. Brazil’s CBN radio reported that the flight then tracked toward Miami. AP reported that he was expected to land there, but there was no official confirmation on Wednesday morning that he had arrived in the United States.
His lawyers told BBC Brasil they were “completely in the dark” about his whereabouts. His campaign chief, Rogério Marinho, said he did not know where Bolsonaro was and had received only a message saying the senator would take some time before speaking with his team again, according to El Universo. Bolsonaro has made no public statement since a video he posted Monday afternoon.
The investigations behind the passport order
The passport order came in an investigation into alleged money laundering involving a Brazilian lawyer accused of laundering more than $1 billion through a fraud scheme, the BBC reported. Police said earlier this month that Bolsonaro had access to the bank accounts of a company owned by the lawyer. Bolsonaro, who has not been charged, denies doing business with the lawyer and called the passport order an attempt to intimidate him.
He is also under investigation over the financing of a film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ordered police to examine his campaign over alleged foreign funding. CBS News Miami reported that one inquiry involves Brazil’s betting industry. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in all of the cases. He has held Italian citizenship since 2023, according to an Italian parliamentary document cited by AFP.
Lula’s win and Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede
Lula won the Oct. 25 runoff with 51.79% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 48.21%, a margin of about 4.4 million votes, after Bolsonaro won the first round on Oct. 4, according to the BBC. Opinion polls had put Bolsonaro narrowly ahead before the runoff. Lula became the first presidential candidate in Brazil to win a runoff after losing the first round. Our report on Lula’s runoff win and Bolsonaro’s refusal to concede has the full result.
Bolsonaro has not conceded and has asked for the election to be annulled. He objects to a Supreme Court justice’s decision to extend voting by two hours on election day, which he called a “dirty trick,” even though both his party and Lula’s had requested the extension, the BBC reported. His Liberal Party has accepted the result while saying the extension “merits investigation.”
Lula called Bolsonaro’s departure “shameful” on Tuesday, according to AFP and CBS News Miami. Asked about Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, Trump told reporters, “I heard he was in Argentina.” On Monday, Trump had called Brazil’s election “rigged,” AFP reported. Background on Washington’s role before the vote is in our Brazil runoff day report.
What comes next
Sean Foreman, a political science professor at Barry University, told CBS News Miami that Bolsonaro could seek asylum in the United States and that his presence could raise questions about the administration’s response to the Brazilian investigation. There is no public record that Bolsonaro has applied for asylum. His younger brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, lives in Texas.
The departure echoes his father’s path. Jair Bolsonaro left Brazil for the United States before Lula’s January 2023 inauguration and returned about three months later. He was later convicted of plotting a coup after the 2022 election and sentenced to 27 years, and he is under house arrest, the BBC and AFP reported. Flávio Bolsonaro had pledged that freeing his father would be his first act if he won. Markets reacted sharply to the result, as covered in our Oct. 26 briefing on the Brazilian real.
Sources
- BBC News: Confusion about Flávio Bolsonaro’s whereabouts as Argentina says he flew to Ecuador
- El Universo: Flávio Bolsonaro arrived in Guayaquil before dawn and his plane left northbound
- CBS News Miami: Brazilians in South Florida react to Flávio Bolsonaro’s arrival
- CBN: After stopping in Ecuador, Flávio Bolsonaro’s flight heads for Miami
- AP: Flávio Bolsonaro flees Brazil and is expected to land in Miami
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