Flávio Bolsonaro is in the United States. The private jet carrying the defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, his wife Fernanda and their two daughters, Carolina and Luiza, touched down at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport at about 9:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday, ending a night flight out of Brazil in defiance of a Supreme Court order. Bolsonaro stepped off the aircraft with his family, was driven away and made no comment. The U.S. government will grant the family entry visas. A close U.S.-based ally, Paulo Figueiredo, said: "Flávio Bolsonaro is well, in security and resting with his family." Figueiredo said there would be a press conference on Thursday in Miami.
The escape route ran through two other countries. Argentina's migration authority says the family crossed into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. on Tuesday over the Tancredo Neves bridge, and that they "possessed valid travel documentation and faced no legal impediments to entering the country." At 11:30 p.m. they boarded a private charter flight operated by Baires Fly. The jet flew to Guayaquil, Ecuador, stopped briefly at about 4 a.m. local time, and flew on to Miami. Neither Argentina's presidency nor Ecuador's ministries have commented.
President Trump welcomed the arrival before the plane even landed. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews early on Wednesday, Trump said of Bolsonaro coming to the United States: "Well, I would approve." He added: "I think they're fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible." Trump said he had not taken sides, and of Flávio's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro: "The father was treated really badly, I thought, but I wasn't involved. That's Brazil. It's a different country." The State Department had already confirmed on Tuesday: "The State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States."
The landing closes a two-day standoff. Bolsonaro lost Sunday's runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by about 4.4 million votes, has not conceded and has threatened to seek the result's annulment; world leaders and the Organization of American States have endorsed Lula's win. Hours after the result, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered him to surrender all of his passports — ordinary, diplomatic and Italian (he holds Italian nationality, which Brazil cannot revoke) — inside a Federal Police money-laundering investigation tied to betting companies. Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing, and in a video posted on Monday he said: "I have never thought about leaving the country. I will hand over my passports and defend myself against this travesty, which is a clear attempt to intimidate me." He did not hand them over. The deadline passed, the passports were cancelled, and by Tuesday police were looking for him.
Lula told supporters in Brasília: "I regret that he left Brazil, because he could have stayed here and proven that the accusations are not true. This act of leaving Brazil is shameful." Lula has also accused Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaro family, and the flight is expected to deepen the rift between the two most populous countries in the Americas, whose trade and tariff fights reach the prices ordinary households, workers and shoppers pay on both sides. For Americans it is also a plain question: whether the country's doors and laws apply the same to a president's political friends as to everyone else. Florida, home to the largest Brazilian community in the United States, is where it has landed.
What happens next is not settled. Bolsonaro's allies say he plans to ask the Trump administration for political asylum, and one source close to the family has claimed asylum was already granted — but no U.S. official has confirmed that any asylum request has been filed or granted. Whether Brazil asks the United States to send him back, and what Washington answers, is not yet known.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States with his wife Fernanda and their two daughters, two days after losing the presidential runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Three people familiar with his movements confirmed on Tuesday that the senator had left the country, a U.S. official said he was on a flight to Florida, and one source close to the family said they had landed in Florida but declined to say where. His exact whereabouts are unconfirmed, but the departure itself no longer rests on his allies' word alone.
Washington confirmed its side of the story on Tuesday. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of visa privacy laws, told reporters: "The State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States." President Trump had made no mention of the departure itself by Tuesday night.
The asylum question sits one step beyond that. His allies say he plans to ask the Trump administration for political asylum, and Mauricio Marcon, a Liberal Party deputy, said in a video that Bolsonaro "has taken a flight and is heading to seek asylum in the United States." One source close to the family told reporters the administration had already granted the family asylum, but no official has confirmed that, and whether a formal asylum request has been filed is not known.
The flight defied a court order issued hours after the result. On Sunday night, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to surrender all of his passports within 24 hours — his ordinary passport, the diplomatic passport he carries as a senator, and his Italian passport — and every one of them has since been cancelled. The same ruling barred him from leaving Brazil and from any contact with lawyer Willer Tomaz. Federal Police served him in Brasília on Monday at the house of his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. The order was issued inside a Federal Police investigation into suspected money laundering and illegal foreign-exchange dealings routed through betting companies, in which Tomaz is also being investigated. Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing in the case.
In a video posted after he was served, Bolsonaro said he had never planned to leave, called the order a clear attempt to intimidate him, and said he would hand over his passports and defend himself. He did not. His campaign lost contact with him early on Tuesday, the deadline passed at 11 a.m. with nothing surrendered, and the Federal Police cancelled the documents and reported his non-compliance to the court; by Tuesday, police were reported to be searching for him. How he got out remains unclear. A senior Federal Police official said there is no record of him leaving through any regular migration point, and while one Argentine report said he crossed into Argentina on his identity card at Foz do Iguaçu, Argentina's government says it has no record of his entering and no asylum request from him, and a private jet at Puerto Iguazú that sought to leave as a "medical flight" for the United States was grounded.
Before the confirmation, his own side denied he had gone: campaign coordinator Rogério Marinho said the senator had not left, and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro called the flight report a "lie." By Tuesday evening Marinho's account had changed — the campaign, he said, had received only a text message on Tuesday morning in which Flávio said he wanted to take a break and would talk later: "We had no news from Flavio or his lawyers about what happened." Eduardo, who has lived in the United States since last year and whom allies expected to meet his brother in Florida on Wednesday, had made no statement about the arrival by Tuesday night. The Federal Police have not publicly confirmed the departure either; Minister of Institutional Relations José Guimarães said he had "no confirmation from the federal police or oversight bodies."
Lula called the reports of the departure "shameful"; his office did not answer requests for comment on Tuesday. For Americans, the decision now sits in Washington: the United States is issuing visas to a foreign presidential candidate who walked out on his own Supreme Court's order, inside an immigration and asylum system already carrying heavy backlogs. If Brazil seeks his return, the fight moves into American courts. What is not yet known is where in Florida the family is, whether an asylum claim has actually been filed, and what Brazil's courts do next — Bolsonaro keeps his Senate seat, and the immunity that comes with it, until his term ends in February.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
President Trump on Monday refused to accept Brazil's runoff result at face value, telling reporters before he flew to Mississippi that the count which returned Lula to power "looked like another rigged election." "Elections have to be indisputable and it looked very bad to me," Trump said. "I thought it had a very bad look, the way it was tabulated." The president offered Lula no congratulations, and his words put Washington's weight behind Flávio Bolsonaro's refusal to concede the race Brazil's electoral authority has declared finished.
Trump's objection, like Bolsonaro's, centres on how the voting day itself was changed at the last minute. Minutes before polls were due to close on Sunday, a Supreme Court justice extended voting nationwide by two hours, a decision both campaigns had asked for — Lula's side over transport failures in São Paulo and Salvador, two of his strongholds, and Bolsonaro's over heavy rain in the south — but one that reached many polling stations only after they had already begun wrapping up, and that paused the count. A result produced by rules rewritten at the end of the day, Trump argues, cannot be the indisputable result an election has to produce. He pointed to no specific fraudulent votes in the remarks; his charge is that the way the election was run and tabulated has left its outcome open to dispute — the same ground on which Bolsonaro says he will ask for the result to be annulled.
Brazil's institutions are closing ranks the other way. Kassio Nunes Marques, the president of the electoral authority — a man appointed to the Supreme Court by Flávio Bolsonaro's own father, Jair Bolsonaro — was among those who recognized Lula's victory on Sunday, and leaders across the region, including conservative presidents who oppose Lula, have accepted the result. The numbers leave the annulment demand a steep climb: with all sections counted, Lula won 51.8 percent to Bolsonaro's 48.2, more than 64 million votes against just under 60 million. In his victory address Lula framed the result as Brazilian democracy safeguarded and said his country refuses to serve as anyone's geopolitical backyard; his camp had issued no direct answer to Trump's remarks on Monday.
What happens next runs through Brazil's courts, not Washington. The electoral authority still has to certify the result formally, Bolsonaro's annulment request will be fought there, and Lula is due to take office on January 5, 2027, for a fourth term. No American action against Brazil was announced with Trump's words — the consequence so far is the statement itself: the President of the United States publicly disputing the declared result in South America's largest country, one week before his own country votes in the midterms.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
Flávio Bolsonaro has refused to concede the runoff. He says he will ask for the result to be annulled, attacking the Supreme Court's two-hour extension of voting on Sunday as unprecedented and calling the outcome impossible to accept. With every section now counted, Lula's win stands at 51.8 per cent to 48.2 per cent — a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes that the annulment bid would have to overturn.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
The result in Brasília lands in Washington too. Analysts of the region read Lula's fourth-term victory as a setback for President Trump, who loses in Flávio Bolsonaro the like-minded ally he had hoped to deal with in Brazil — and their assessment is that the outcome will disappoint him. But the same assessment carries the limit of that disappointment: Brazil's voters decided their own election, and a country's sovereignty overrides whatever any outside president prefers. Washington, the analysts say, will keep acting in the region on its own terms regardless of who sits in the Planalto Palace.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
Official: Brazil's Superior Electoral Court (TSE) has now officially declared Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva the winner of the presidential runoff, with 98.27 per cent of sections counted. The declaration makes formal what the count had already settled: Lula is president-elect of Brazil for a fourth term, and Flávio Bolsonaro's bid to succeed his father falls short. The remaining sections are still being totalled, but they cannot change the outcome.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
Result: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is projected to win Brazil's presidential runoff and secure a fourth term in the Planalto. With 96.83 per cent of sections counted, Lula leads Flávio Bolsonaro 51.74 per cent to 48.26 per cent — a margin the remaining sections cannot overturn.
The projection caps a night that swung twice. Flávio, who won the first round on October 4, led the early count after polls closed two hours late; the lead flipped back to Lula around the halfway mark of the count, when barely thirteen thousand votes separated the two men, and from there the president's advantage widened steadily as the big-city sections reported. The two-hour extension — ordered after bus shortages in Salvador and São Paulo threatened to lock voters out, a fight that ended with a Bahia court ordering the arrest of Salvador's mobility chief — became part of the result's story: in the end, the voters who waited got counted.
Lula, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and returned to power in 2023, now wins a fourth presidential election, a record in the country's democratic era. Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign has not yet conceded at the time of this update.
— Previously posted on Sunday, October 25, 2026 —
Polls closed at 7 p.m. Brasília time (6 p.m. ET) on Sunday in Brazil's presidential runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, after a two-hour nationwide extension, and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) resumed the count. Flávio Bolsonaro has since overtaken Lula as more sections report. At 7:59 p.m. Brasília time (6:59 p.m. ET), with 21.84% of sections counted, Flávio Bolsonaro had 50.47% of valid votes (13,637,217) and Lula 49.53% (13,384,027), a gap of 253,190 votes, according to TSE figures. No winner has been declared. Earlier, at 7:23 p.m. Brasília time (6:23 p.m. ET) with 3.3% counted, Lula had led 51.34% to 48.66%, and at 1.5% counted the margin had been 52.27% to 47.73%. The Guardian's TSE tracker showed Flávio Bolsonaro first moving ahead by 7:51 p.m. Brasília time, 50.21% to 49.79% at 16.4% counted.
The Federal Police (PF) said it has opened a formal investigation in Sergipe and preliminary inquiries in São Paulo, Bahia, Alagoas and Piauí into bus shortages that may have kept voters from reaching the polls. "The crimes under investigation are obstructing the exercise of the vote and also concealing means of transport to hinder the exercise of the vote," said Dennis Cali, the PF's director of investigation and combating organized crime and corruption. He said officers were taking statements on Sunday from people involved in supplying public transport, and that the preliminary inquiries could become formal investigations.
Why voting was extended
Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) Justice Cristiano Zanin on Sunday extended voting nationwide by two hours, to 7 p.m. Brasília time (6 p.m. ET), in the presidential runoff between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro. He granted a request from Lula's campaign, which said a lack of public buses had kept voters from reaching the polls. Polls were originally set to close at 5 p.m.
"Considering the seriousness of the facts reported, which reached the Supreme Federal Court at 16:32:49 today, and given the evident urgency of the measure, I order an extension of two hours, until 7 p.m. Brasília time, of the close of voting in all sections throughout Brazil," Zanin wrote.
The complaint began in Bahia. There, hundreds of buses were kept in their garages in Salvador, and the regional electoral court ordered the full fleet restored under a fine of R$1 million per hour, along with the arrest of Salvador's municipal mobility secretary, Pablo Souza. Lula's coalition then widened its petition to at least nine states, including São Paulo, where only about 60% of buses were reportedly running despite a court order for the full fleet. Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign separately asked for a two-hour extension in parts of Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul hit by heavy rain.
The Electoral Prosecutor's Office opposed a nationwide extension. Deputy Electoral Prosecutor General Alexandre Espinosa told the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that "the voting hours set by law must remain unchanged," and that any abuse should be investigated and punished separately.
The TSE paused the count, which had already started, after the ruling. Before the pause, at 5:06 p.m. Brasília time (4:06 p.m. ET), with 1,225 of 499,248 sections counted (0.25%), Lula had 57.66% (193,574 votes) and Flávio Bolsonaro 42.34% (142,169). That early sample is far too small to indicate a winner. Counting resumed after polls closed at 7 p.m. Brasília time.
Sources
Photo: Lula (official campaign photo, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Flávio Bolsonaro (May 21, 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons
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