Argentina’s government confirmed Wednesday that Brazil’s defeated presidential candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, crossed into the country and boarded a private jet despite a Brazilian court order barring him from leaving.
The immigration agency said in a statement posted at 2:01 a.m. that Bolsonaro, his wife and their two daughters crossed the Tancredo Neves bridge from Brazil into the northeastern province of Misiones at 10:50 p.m. Tuesday with valid travel documents. They boarded a private jet at Puerto Iguazú airport at 11:30 p.m., the agency said, on a flight plan to Guayaquil, Ecuador. The plane stopped there and landed near Miami on Wednesday morning, according to FlightRadar24 tracking, and video from the airport showed Bolsonaro stepping off with his family. The same agency had stated earlier on Tuesday, hours before the crossing time it gave, that it had no record of Bolsonaro entering the country.
La Dirección Nacional de Migraciones informa que a las 22:50 hs del dia 27/10, ingresaron por el paso fronterizo de Puente internacional Tancredo Neves en la provincia de Misiones, los ciudadanos Flavio Nantes Bolsonaro, Fernanda Antunes Figueira Bolsonaro, Carolina Figueira Bolsonaro y Luiza Figueira Bolsonaro, quienes lo hicieron con documentación hábil de viaje sin ningún impedimento legal para el ingreso al país, asimismo los tránsitos fueron registrados por la autoridad de aplicación sin incidentes. Por su parte, a las 23:30 hs, la comitiva ingresante abordó un vuelo privado despachado por la compañía Baires Fly S.A con destino a la ciudad de Guayaquil, Ecuador, según se informó en el plan de vuelo.
Translation: "The National Directorate of Migration reports that at 10:50 p.m. on Oct. 27, Flavio Nantes Bolsonaro, Fernanda Antunes Figueira Bolsonaro, Carolina Figueira Bolsonaro and Luiza Figueira Bolsonaro entered through the Tancredo Neves International Bridge border crossing in Misiones province, with valid travel documents and no legal impediment to entering the country, and their transits were recorded by the competent authority without incident. For its part, at 11:30 p.m. the incoming party boarded a private flight dispatched by the company Baires Fly S.A. to the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to the flight plan."
Brazil is Argentina’s partner in Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, and the two governments were already at odds. President Milei backed Bolsonaro’s campaign and has offered Lula no congratulations, and Brazil recalled its ambassador from Buenos Aires after Milei attacked Lula at the July launch of Bolsonaro’s campaign. A lower-ranking envoy has run the Brazilian embassy since.
The government’s position is that everything was legal. The immigration agency said the family had valid documents and faced no legal impediment to entering, and a source at the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, said every legal step was followed. Brazil’s court had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passports, which Brazilian police then cancelled, but had not ordered his arrest. Argentine judicial sources say no Interpol alert or other restriction barred him from entering Argentina, and a Brazilian diplomat and Argentine migration sources say he used an Italian passport. Florencia Carignano, an opposition deputy and a former head of the immigration agency, agreed that nothing barred his entry but said the decision to let him in was Milei’s.
Government voices have since said more. An unnamed Casa Rosada spokesman told La Nación that Argentina had worked with the Trump administration on the departure: “Yes, there was collaboration with Trump.” Juan Pablo Carreira, the presidency’s director of digital communications, who posts on X as Juan Doe, wrote that Milei’s government had more guts than any in history and that Bolsonaro was now safe from the claws of communism and could keep fighting from the United States instead of from a cell in Brasília like his father. Milei, speaking at a lithium plant opening in Catamarca on Wednesday, did not mention Bolsonaro.
President Trump said he would approve of Bolsonaro coming to the United States, and a senior State Department official said the family had been granted visas. Lula said Tuesday that Bolsonaro’s departure was shameful and that he could have stayed to prove the accusations false.
In Argentina, opposition lawmakers from several parties have asked Congress to summon Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, Cabinet chief Diego Santilli (the president’s top minister) and Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva, whose ministry oversees the immigration agency, to explain whether the government helped Bolsonaro leave. “Bolsonaro fled. Milei helped him,” Peronist deputy Agustín Rossi wrote on X. Patricia Bullrich, who leads Milei’s party in the Senate, wrote that the people decide at the polls and their will is respected. On Bolsonaro, she said democracy should not be “binary: the winner governs and the loser goes to jail,” and criticized the use of a judiciary that is not impartial to eliminate the opposition.
Opposition lawmaker Marcela Pagano and left-wing leader Gabriel Solano have filed criminal complaints over the trip. The federal prosecutor in Puerto Iguazú, Fabián Martínez, has asked official bodies for reports on how Bolsonaro entered and whether anything barred him, judicial sources said.
