Mom of Karoline Leavitt’s Nephew Calls Out White House’s ‘Disgusting’ Narrative

Just before Thanksgiving, news that Bruna Ferreira—mother of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew—was being held by ICE in a Louisiana detention facility shook the White House. Leavitt has been uncharacteristically quiet, and the Department of Homeland Security has tried to paint Ferreira as an absent mother and criminal with a previous arrest for “battery” who Leavitt has barely ever spoken to. But Ferreira has since told the Washington Post that that’s all bullshit.

“I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister,” she told the outlet from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. “Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”

The 33-year-old has an 11-year-old son with Leavitt’s 35-year-old brother, Michael. While they are no longer in a relationship, they were previously engaged and continue to co-parent–despite DHS claiming that Ferreira’s never lived with her son and hadn’t spoken to Karoline “in years.” She told the Post that she was at her son’s football game with Leavitt’s parents and brother just weeks before her arrest.

Ferreira was detained by ICE at a traffic stop on November 12. Her sister told the Boston Globe that ICE agents “were not the most gentle with her” when they swarmed her car as she was leaving her house in Massachusetts to pick up her son from school.

“I made a mistake there, in trusting,” she said, adding that the White House narrative about her is “disgusting.” She also emphasized that she takes her son to school, attends all his sports games, brings him to Dave & Buster’s, and fills his room with “everything a young boy needs.”

Ferreira 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 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 (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), followed every requirement, and has always strived to do the right thing.” DACA is the Obama-era program that 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. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin recently told the Associated Press that the program does not “automatically” protect anyone from deportation.

Since being detained, Leavitt’s father, Bob Leavitt, has reportedly been urging Ferreira to “self-deport” and then return later. But her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said that’s a trap: under federal law, she would be banned from entering the U.S. for 10 years. Pomerlau also says his client was targeted and that the allegations about her being a criminal are false, as there are no court records or record of her ever being arrested.

“I had no involvement in her being picked up by ice,” Leavitt texted the Post about his child’s mother. “I have no control over that and had no involvement in that whatsoever.”

On Monday, immigration judge Cynthia Goodman ordered that Ferreira be released on the lowest-dollar bail possible—and she was released on a $1,500 bond. Even the lawyers representing DHS agreed that the woman with no criminal record should be let go, as she’s not a flight risk or danger to society.

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