A defeated Brazilian presidential candidate skipped a Supreme Court order to hand over his passports and landed in Miami within two days of the ruling.
Story Snapshot
- Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his passports and barred him from leaving the country.
- Federal Police canceled his passports after he missed the court’s 24-hour deadline.
- Bolsonaro landed in Miami anyway, reportedly slipping past Brazilian exit checks using an Italian passport.
- The U.S. State Department said it will give Bolsonaro and his family American visas despite the open Brazilian probe.
Court Order Followed Election Defeat
Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Senator Flávio Bolsonaro to surrender his ordinary, diplomatic, and foreign passports. The order came within hours of Bolsonaro’s loss to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s presidential runoff. Moraes also barred Bolsonaro from leaving the country and from contacting his lawyer, Willer Tomaz, as part of a Supreme Court investigation.
The investigation centers on alleged money laundering tied to a scheme reported at roughly $1 billion. Bolsonaro denied any wrongdoing. In a video posted after the ruling, he said, “I was served with an order to hand over my passports, and I am also prohibited from leaving the country”.
Passports Canceled After Deadline Missed
The court gave Bolsonaro 24 hours to turn in his travel documents. He did not meet that deadline. Brazil’s Federal Police then canceled his ordinary and diplomatic passports, enforcing the travel restriction Moraes had already put in place. By the time the cancellation took effect, Bolsonaro was no longer in the country.
News outlets reported he and his family landed in Miami on Wednesday morning, shortly after the Supreme Court order and the same week the United States announced its visa decision. Brazilian authorities have not publicly released the full court order, including its case number, leaving reporters to rely on summaries and Bolsonaro’s own public statements.
A Possible Route Around Brazilian Checkpoints
An unnamed Brazilian diplomat told The Associated Press that Bolsonaro used an Italian passport to enter Argentina first, avoiding a Brazilian exit checkpoint record. Officials said such a record was not required when leaving on a foreign passport. Argentina’s migration authority said travelers in the group held valid documents and faced no legal barrier to entering the country.
Reporting has not confirmed every detail of this route. The Miami Herald noted uncertainty over exactly which passport Bolsonaro used, and the State Department had not clarified the question publicly. Still, multiple outlets consistently describe the Italian passport as the likely explanation for how he avoided Brazil’s exit controls.
Washington Grants Visas Amid Controversy
A senior State Department official confirmed the United States would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family and allow them to enter the country. The decision drew quick political attention, with CNN reporting that President Trump had voiced approval of letting Bolsonaro come to the United States. The visa move places Washington in the middle of a politically charged Brazilian legal fight.
By MAURICIO SAVARESE SAO PAULO (AP) — Defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States following a stunning loss to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s election, according… https://t.co/GP7gVCZss9
— Capital Gazette (@capgaznews) October 27, 2026
The State Department has not detailed the visa category, the disclosures in the application, or whether officials weighed the pending Brazilian investigation before approving entry. That leaves an open question about how the two governments’ actions fit together, even as the basic facts of the trip are well documented.
A Case Testing Trust in Institutions
Travel bans and passport seizures are normally preventive tools used to stop flight risk, not findings of guilt. Moraes cited concern that Bolsonaro could flee the country during an active investigation. That concern appears to have been borne out within days, regardless of how the underlying criminal case against Bolsonaro eventually turns out.
The episode lands amid deep divisions in Brazil over Moraes’s role in cases involving Bolsonaro family members and allies, with critics on the right raising conflict-of-interest claims connected to the justice’s wife’s law firm. Those disputes do not change the documented sequence of events: a court order, a missed deadline, canceled passports, and a landing in Miami.
Sources:
facebook.com, bbc.com, latintimes.com, thecanadianpressnews.ca, miamiherald.com, www1.folha.uol.com.br, cp24.com
