Flávio Bolsonaro's Jet Leaves Guayaquil, Expected to Land in Miami on Wednesday Morning

A jet carrying the far-right Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro has left Guayaquil in Ecuador and is on its way to Miami, Florida, where it is expected to arrive mid-morning on Wednesday. The senator is expected to hold a press conference in the US at some point on Wednesday, and the flight is continuing to the Miami-Opa Locka Executive airport.

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

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

Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, boarded the jet with his wife and two daughters at about 11.30pm, bound for Guayaquil, reportedly to avoid Brazilian airspace. They made a brief stop in Ecuador and have continued on to Miami.

A senior US state department official told media outlets that visas would be granted to Bolsonaro and his family. On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump, returning from a campaign event in Texas, said, 'Well, I would approve' their move to the US, adding, 'They're fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible.'

Lula called Bolsonaro's flight 'shameful'. At an event celebrating his 81st birthday in Brasília, he said Brazil is the Bolsonaro family's second homeland and their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as they have become accustomed to doing.

The federal police faced criticism on Wednesday morning for failing to prevent him from leaving the country. There is a gap between the last time he was seen by allies at about 6pm on Monday and the moment he entered Argentina late on Tuesday, and it remains unclear how or when he travelled to the border or where he was during that time. Footage from a television channel there shows two vans crossing the border checkpoint 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 to be retained over concerns that he might flee, citing an interview given last Friday by his brother, the former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro. Speaking on a podcast in the US, where he is in self-imposed exile, Eduardo said if his brother were to lose the election, Flávio should not concede and should go to the US. The O Globo newspaper reported that the escape had been planned for weeks as a contingency in case he lost, and that Eduardo had been its main organiser, holding talks with US officials about receiving the senator.