Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has left the country for the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election, three sources told Reuters on Tuesday afternoon, with the US State Department due to grant him and his family entry visas. Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede to leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left Brazil after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports. The ruling relates to a money laundering probe in which he denies wrongdoing.

Source: Reuters

“The State Department will issue visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States,” a senior State Department official said, in a statement also reported by Sky News. The location of Flávio, his wife and two daughters was not immediately clear; one source close to the family said Flávio had landed in Florida, but declined to say where.

Source: Sky News via Q Radio

Passports cancelled after the deadline passed

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes had instructed Bolsonaro on Monday to surrender his personal and diplomatic passports within 24 hours as part of the investigation, The Arabian Post reported. The deadline expired on Tuesday without compliance, and his Brazilian travel documents were cancelled; federal police were investigating how the senator managed to leave the country despite the restrictions, and a senior police official indicated he had not passed through any regular Brazilian immigration checkpoint. Reports suggesting he crossed into neighbouring Argentina before travelling on could not immediately be independently established, and Argentina’s government initially said it had no official record of him entering its territory.

Bolsonaro’s own campaign appeared to be in the dark. His campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, said he was not sure of the politician’s whereabouts and that the pair had not spoken since Tuesday morning, Sky News reported. “We had no news from Flavio or his lawyers about what happened,” Marinho said. “I received a text message from him, he said he wanted to take a break and then he would talk to us.” On Monday, Bolsonaro had said he would comply with the request to hand over his passport, denying he planned to flee the country, and said the judge’s ruling was based on remarks by his younger brother Eduardo, who said on a podcast last week that Flávio should leave the country if the run-off went against him.

Departure deepens the Brazil–US rift

Responding to the news, election winner Lula described the reports as “shameful”, Sky News reported. Bolsonaro’s departure threatens to deepen a rift between the two most populous nations in the Americas, Reuters reported: Lula has accused Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaros to put them back in power, and Reuters reported ahead of Sunday’s election on a US State Department campaign to restore them to office. President Donald Trump made no mention of Flávio Bolsonaro’s departure in comments to the press on Monday, but said the Brazilian vote “looked like another rigged election” — an allegation about the election, not an established finding.

The move echoes his father’s path: former President Jair Bolsonaro also went to the United States after refusing to concede to Lula in 2022. He eventually returned, but was later given a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia, Reuters reported. What Brazil’s courts and police do next — and whether Washington confirms any status beyond entry visas — remains unannounced; claims circulating about asylum have not been confirmed by any official.