Flavio Bolsonaro lands in Miami with his family after refusing a Brazilian court order to surrender his passports

The journey took about twelve hours and crossed three countries. Flavio Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian presidential runoff to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday. On Monday a judge ordered him to hand over his passports and barred him from leaving Brazil. On Monday he said in public that he had no plans to flee. “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 said. By Tuesday night he was gone.

Argentina migration department said Bolsonaro entered the country at 10:50 p.m. on Tuesday with his wife and two daughters, crossing the Tancredo Neves Bridge at Puerto Iguazu on valid travel documents. At about 11:30 p.m. the family boarded a private Gulfstream operated by Baires Fly and flew to Guayaquil in Ecuador, on a route that avoided Brazilian airspace. The plane left Guayaquil early on Wednesday and landed at Miami Opa Locka Executive Airport at 10:31 a.m. Reuters TV pictures showed the family getting off the aircraft. At the airport, members of the entourage held umbrellas against the cameras as the family got into a car. Whether they mean to stay in Florida is not yet clear.

Washington opened the door before he reached it. The State Department said on Tuesday that it would issue entry visas to Bolsonaro and his family. Trump, asked about the case outside Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, backed the decision and attacked the election his ally had just lost. “I think they are fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible. It got bad reviews, and look what happened to their market,” Trump said. “Would I approve of it? Yeah, I would approve it.” Trump has argued before that Bolsonaro father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27 year prison sentence for plotting a coup after his own defeat by Lula in 2022.

The case waiting for Flavio Bolsonaro at home is a money laundering investigation. He denies wrongdoing. He keeps his Senate seat until February, when his term ends and with it his immunity from prosecution. His defeat on Sunday surprised his own camp. He led the first round of the election and was widely favored to beat Lula, then refused at first to concede and said he would seek an annulment of the result over what he called foul play. Lula has accused Washington of working with the Bolsonaro family to return them to power, and Reuters reported before the election on a State Department campaign aimed at restoring the family to office. The arrival in Miami now sets the two largest countries in the Americas against each other over a man one of them elected to its Senate and the other has just welcomed in.