Karoline ‘Pro-Family’ Leavitt’s Been Real Quiet About ICE Detaining Her Nephew’s Mother

As the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt loves to yap. She’ll go on and on about how Democrats execute babies, how they spewed “violent, inciting rhetoric” when questioning DOGE’s access to sensitive data, and how the mainstream media continues to bully and mistreat poor President Trump. The list of lies and bullshit is infinite. Yet she gets real quiet about who donated to Trump’s $300 million ballroom, Trump’s ties to Epstein, and which member of her family is being detained by Kristi Noem’s ICE goons for seemingly no reason.

Bruna Ferreira, the mother of Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew, was picked up by ICE outside her Massachusetts home on November 12 and is currently being held at a facility in Louisiana. Ferreira’s baby daddy is Leavitt’s 35-year-old brother, Michael, and while the two aren’t married, they were previously engaged and currently share joint custody of their child—again, Leavitt’s nephew. Michael reportedly lives between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Ferreira, who’s 33, is a native of Brazil, but has lived in the U.S. since she was six. Her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, set up a GoFundMe to help raise money for her legal fees and wrote that their parents brought Ferreira to the U.S. in December 1998 on a visa and that she’s “maintained her legal status through DACA, followed every requirement, and has always strived to do the right thing.”

When Jezebel reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment, a spokesperson described Ferreira as a “criminal illegal alien from Brazil” with “a previous arrest for battery,” without offering further context or detail. DHS confirmed Ferreira is being held at an ICE Processing Center in Louisiana and “is in removal proceedings.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation,” the DHS spokesperson wrote. However, Ferreira was reportedly very close to getting her green card, with a final interview scheduled for the spring. The White House Press Office did not respond to Jezebel’s request for comment.

“If she were to help in any way, if she were willing to do anything to help us, she would have reached out by now. She has my phone number. We’ve been family for the last 13 years,” Dos Santos Rodrigues told the Boston Globe this week. “I understand the policies and how it looks. But I also think when it comes to family, you put certain things aside. I don’t care who you work for.”

Her sister also told the Globe that ICE agents “were not the most gentle with her” when they swarmed her car as she was leaving her house to pick up her son from school.

Disturbingly, Leavitt’s family, including Michael, had allegedly been telling Ferreira to leave the U.S. herself and treat it like a casual trip to South America. “They just kept saying, ’Tell her to self-deport,’” Dos Santos Rodrigues said. “Self-deport to where? Brazil is not her home. They’re trying to push it off as a vacation. That’s not a vacation. Bruna barely speaks the language.”

Ferreira was a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient under the Obama administration, which allowed young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as kids to live and work here legally. Trump tried to end DACA during his first term but was blocked by the Supreme Court—though that’s done little to protect DACA recipients from immigration sweeps. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Associated Press on Tuesday that the program does not “automatically” protect anyone from deportation.

“She didn’t commit a crime. She wasn’t breaking the law. She was following the laws Congress created for her to get a green card, and she got detained with no justification,” Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, told USA Today. “That’s illegal.”

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