Published on •Updated
Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States following his defeat in Sunday’s presidential election, according to multiple media reports.
Bolsonaro’s departure was confirmed to CNN and Reuters by US officials and to the Brazilian newspaper “Folha de São Paulo” by allies of the Bolsonaro family. The US State Department has reportedly said it would issue visas to him and his family.
The former presidential candidate is expected to arrive in the United States in the coming hours. According to Brazilian news outlet Metrópoles, his destination is Miami. He is reportedly travelling with his wife and two daughters.
Bolsonaro’s passports were cancelled on Tuesday after Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports to Brazilian Federal Police (PF) in the wake of his election defeat to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over the weekend.
Bolsonaro agreed with his legal team that he would comply with the order and that he would deliver the documents to authorities on Tuesday morning, but he had failed to do so by Tuesday afternoon.
A police source told the AFP news agency that Bolsonaro’s passports had now been “cancelled” and confirmed that there was “no formal record” of him leaving the country.
It comes after Argentine outlet Infobae reported that the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro had arrived in the Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú at 2 am on Tuesday, using his national identity card. He was reportedly preparing to continue on to the United States on a private flight.
According to Infobae, the aircraft was a Gulfstream G400, registration LV-JQW, owned by the company Baires Fly SA, which requested customs clearance for four passengers and three crew members.
The plane left Buenos Aires for Puerto Iguazú on Monday at 10:20 pm.
Since early Tuesday morning, Bolsonaro’s allies have been trying to contact him, without success, according to Letícia Casado, a columnist for the UOL news website.
Euronews has contacted the PF for comment.
Rogério Marinho, Bolsonaro’s general campaign coordinator, has denied that Bolsonaro has left Brazil.
Argentina’s government has also rejected the claims.
On Friday, two days before the second round of the presidential election, Bolsonaro’s brother Eduardo argued that he should leave Brazil if he were defeated. Eduardo has been living in the US since 2025, after being sentenced to prison by Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court for coercion in the case involving his father Jair’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2022 election.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the Brazilian election looked “rigged,” without providing evidence.
Speaking to the media, Trump said the vote “looked terrible” and “like another rigged election.”
“I didn’t take sides,” Trump told reporters when asked for his thoughts. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”
Bolsonaro initially refused to recognise Lula’s victory, saying it was “impossible” to acknowledge the result and that the election should have been annulled. He later said he would “organise the opposition.”
In a video post shared on social media on Monday, he added that he had been banned from leaving Brazil and had been “served a notice to surrender my passports.”