Flávio Bolsonaro saga deepens after Argentina says he left for Ecuador

Flávio Bolsonaro entered and left Argentina Tuesday evening, Argentine migration authorities said, countering media reports that he’d already reached the United States and deepening questions about the whereabouts of the defeated Brazilian presidential candidate.

Bolsonaro and his family entered Argentina through the border of the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu, the Argentine national migration authority said in a social media post early Wednesday.

The family then left on a private flight bound for Ecuador at 11.30pm local time Tuesday night, it said.

The account intensified the chaos of a saga that has gripped Brazil in a days following his runoff election loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, who is facing multiple criminal investigations in Brazil, has not spoken publicly since Monday, when he released a social media video saying the Supreme Court had ordered him to surrender his passports within 24 hours. He failed to do so on Tuesday, and reports swirled that he had fled the country.

The US State Department announced it would grant Bolsonaro and his family visas to enter the United States, and Brazilian newspaper O Globo and other outlets reported that he had landed in Miami on Tuesday.

The details from Argentina create an escape route that appears to trace a network of ideological allies across the Americas.

Bolsonaro crossed into Javier Milei’s Argentina, then boarded a jet bound for Ecuador under Daniel Noboa, on his way to Donald Trump’s US. 

There’s no established evidence of direct presidential help. But the Argentine account also raises questions about how Bolsonaro entered the country.

Its migration authority said Bolsonaro and his family “presented valid travel documentation, and there were no legal impediments to their entry.” Brazilian Federal Police had cancelled Bolsonaro’s passports earlier in the day, according to a police official with knowledge of the matter.

On Wednesday morning, O Globo and other Brazilian media reported that Bolsonaro and the family were en route to Miami.