Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro and his family landed in Miami, Florida in the US on Wednesday morning.
His plan to leave Brazil became public knowledge late on Tuesday, soon after he had refused to concede defeat in Sunday’s presidential elections and pledged to challenge the results.
Bolsonaro refused to comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court order to surrender his passports, tied to a money-laundering investigation in which he denies wrongdoing, and the US State Department later said it would grant him and his family visas.
When did Bolsonaro arrive, how did he reach Miami?
Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters were seen disembarking a Gulfstream G400 plane and heading into the Miami-Opa Locka airport on Wednesday morning.
Their journey across the Americas had captured regional attention.
The quartet first flew into Argentina late on Tuesday, then took a private jet to the Ecuadorean city of Guayaquil. From there, they continued to Miami in Florida.
Bolsonaro would lose his immunity from prosecution in February when his term in the Senate ends. On Monday, he had said in an Instagram post that he had no intention of leaving the country and that he would “hand over my passports and defend myself against this travesty, which is a clear attempt to intimidate me.”
According to the AFP news agency, Bolsonaro also holds Italian citizenship and so was able to travel despite his Brazilian and diplomatic passports being canceled.
Potential source of strain between Trump’s US and Lula’s Brazil
Bolsonaro’s departure and his arrival in Florida — like his father Jair Bolsonaro before him after Brazil’s previous presidential elections — could deepen a rift between the two most populous countries in the Americas.
During the election campaign, incumbent Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva had accused the Donald Trump administration of colluding with the Bolsonaro family in a bid to help them return to power.
After the election results, Trump appeared to question the integrity of the vote, saying he thought the extension to voting times was a “very bad look.” He had also alleged in the past that Jair Bolsonaro was the victim of judicial persecution in Brazil.
Bolsonaro senior is now in jail in Brazil on charges of leading a conspiracy designed to keep him in power despite defeat in 2022’s presidential election.
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Edited by: Alex Berry
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