Brazilian senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who lost the presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has arrived in the United States.
The 45-year-old landed in Miami, Florida, with his wife and two daughters, 48 hours after refusing to concede defeat.
Bolsonaro secured 48% of the vote against Lula’s 52% and subsequently threatened to seek to “annul” the election results.
Bolsonaro, the son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, entered Argentina at 10:50 pm local time on Tuesday with his wife, Fernanda Antunes Figueira Bolsonaro, and their daughters, Carolina and Luiza, according to Argentina’s migration authority. The senator received the Supreme Court order to hand over his Brazilian passports on Monday, according to a video in which he recounted being served the notice outside the home where his father is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest. Jair Bolsonaro attempted a coup after losing the 2022 presidential election to Lula.
US President Donald Trump remarked early Wednesday (local time) that he would “approve” of Flavio Bolsonaro coming to the United States, describing the Brazilian senator and his family as “fine people”. “The election was really strange, and I thought it was terrible,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland after returning from a campaign event in Texas on Tuesday. They crossed via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge, a key border crossing linking Brazil with Argentina’s northeastern province of Misiones. Bolsonaro’s departure is likely to strain relations between Brazil’s newly re-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentine President Javier Milei, a close ally of US President Donald Trump who travelled to Brazil to campaign for Bolsonaro. Following that defeat, the former president fled to Florida before returning to Brazil three months later. He did not elaborate but made clear that he did not endorse the election results.