Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly detained a woman directly connected to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s family.
No one is above the law… not even the mother of the White House press secretary’s nephew.
ICE says the woman is Brazilian who overstayed her tourist visa by more than two decades. The woman is reportedly the biological mother of Leavitt’s nephew.
Bruna Caroline Ferreira was taken into custody November 12 in Massachusetts, and is currently being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, authorities said. She is in removal proceedings and will be deported.
Ferreira and Michael Leavitt, Karoline Leavitt’s brother, have an 11-year-old son together. The boy has lived full-time with his father in New Hampshire since his birth, according to multiple sources.
“My only concern has always been the safety, well-being, and privacy of my son,” Michael Leavitt said in a statement.
Michael Leavitt said that Ferreira has maintained a relationship with their son, but the boy has not spoken to her since her detention. Karoline Leavitt and Ferreira have not spoken in many years.
“Karoline had no involvement whatsoever in this matter,” a Trump administration official said.
A DHS spokesperson said Ferreira is “a ‘criminal illegal alien from Brazil’ who overstayed her tourist visa, which expired in June 1999.”
Ferreira “has an arrest on suspicion of battery” in the past, DHS said. Ferreira’s attorney Todd Pomerleau has forcefully denied that she’d been previously arrested and said she will fight her deportation.
“Bruna has no criminal record whatsoever. I don’t know where that is coming from. Show us the proof. There’s no charges out there. She’s not a criminal, or illegal alien. We’re hearing that said about anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen,” Pomerleau said.
Pomerleau claims Ferreira originally entered the country lawfully and previously held DACA status.
“She’s in the process of actually getting her residency and she was abruptly arrested and taken from her young child right before Thanksgiving,” Pomerleau said.
The Boston Globe reported that Ferreira was leaving her Revere home to pick up her son from school in New Hampshire when ICE agents surrounded her car, and demanded her driver’s license, which Ferreira didn’t have. She was then detained after her identity was confirmed.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement: “Under President Donald Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation.”
Karoline Leavitt, 28, is originally from New Hampshire. She was appointed White House Press Secretary by President Trump in November 2024, and has served as one of the most public-facing figures in the Trump administration.