Flávio Bolsonaro flies to Miami after fleeing Brazil amid election defeat | Flavio Bolsonaro

A plane carrying Brazilian far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has left Guayaquil in Ecuador and is heading to Miami, Florida, where he is expected to arrive mid-morning Wednesday.

After losing Sunday night’s election to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro disappeared for more than 24 hours, until Argentine migration authorities said he had entered the country by land on Tuesday evening.

There he boarded a Gulfstream IV registered LV-JQW. The plane had been parked at Puerto Iguazú airport since the early hours of the previous morning, when the first reports emerged in Argentine media that he intended to flee on that plane.

Bolsonaro, the son of imprisoned former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, boarded the plane with his wife and two daughters around 11:30 p.m., bound for Guayaquil, apparently to avoid Brazilian airspace. They made a brief stopover in Ecuador and continued to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport. The senator is expected to hold a news conference in the United States on Wednesday.

A senior US State Department official told media that visas would be granted to Bolsonaro and his family, and on Tuesday evening the US president said he would approve their move to the country.

“They are good people. The election was very strange and I thought it was terrible,” Donald Trump said, returning from a campaign event in Texas. “I didn’t take sides, you know. I know them both. I know Lula. I know Flavio a little. I know the father very well.”

Lula called Bolsonaro’s flight “shameful.” “This is what the Bolsonaro family is like. Brazil is their second home. Their first home is to lick the boots of the United States, as they have become accustomed to doing,” he said at an event celebrating his 81st birthday in Brasilia.

Some in the Brazilian government suspected Bolsonaro’s allies spent Tuesday privately telling the press that he was already on his way to the United States to distract from his real plan via Argentina. The federal police are criticized for failing to prevent him from leaving the country.

There is a gap between the last time he was seen by the allies around 6 p.m. Monday and when he entered Argentina Tuesday evening. It remains unclear how and when he got to the border, or where he was during this time.

Footage from a television channel shows two vans crossing the border post and then being escorted by airport security officers to the airport.

Shortly after the election result, police asked the Supreme Court to order Bolsonaro’s passport retained, fearing he would flee, citing an interview given last Friday by his brother, former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro.

Speaking on a podcast in the United States, where he went into voluntary exile and is lobbying the Trump administration against Lula, Eduardo said that if his brother lost the election he should not give in and should go to the United States.

The newspaper O Globo reported that the escape had been planned for weeks in case of defeat, and that Eduardo had been the main organizer, talking with American officials to receive the senator.