Flávio Bolsonaro flees Brazil through Argentina, en route to Ecuador, migration authority says

SAO PAULO (AP) — Flávio Bolsonaro, the defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, fled his country to Argentina and is en route to Ecuador alongside his wife and two daughters, Argentina's migration authority said on Wednesday. The 45-year-old senator and his family were granted United States visas the day before by the Trump administration.

The move is almost certain to cause a big diplomatic rift between Brazil's newly reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei, who traveled to Brazil to take part in Bolsonaro's campaign. Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports.

Argentina's migration authority said on X that Bolsonaro, his wife Fernanda Antunes Figueira Bolsonaro, and his daughters Carolina Figueira Bolsonaro, and Luiza Figueira Bolsonaro crossed into the country at 10:50 p.m. It added the three entered via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge, a primary border checkpoint linking Brazil to Argentina’s northeastern province of Misiones.

“Those who did so possessed valid travel documentation and faced no legal impediments to entering the country; furthermore, their transit was recorded by the relevant authority without any incidents,” the Argentine migration authority said.

The authority also said that at 11:30 p.m. local time, shortly after clearing immigration control, the four boarded a private charter flight operated by aviation company Baires Fly S.A. According to the filed flight plan, the aircraft departed for Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, told a few dozen supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasilia that he did not have precise information about Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, but said he had left Brazil.

“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.”

Neither Brazilian government representatives nor Bolsonaro’s were immediately available to reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

U.S. President Donald 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 returning from campaigning in Texas on Tuesday. He did not elaborate but stressed that he didn't endorse the election results.

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

Bolsonaro’s decision to leave Brazil came as a deadline for him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon Tuesday. It remained unclear whether he had complied, but allies said late Tuesday he also has an Italian passport.

The defeated candidate was served with a Supreme Court order to surrender his Brazilian passports Monday. In a video, he said he received it outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula.

After that defeat, Jair Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Florida . He returned three months later.