The mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew has sharply criticized Leavitt from inside immigration detention, accusing her of promoting a “disgusting” narrative that portrays her as an absent parent.
Brazilian national Bruna Ferreira, 33, who was detained by ICE agents in Revere, Massachusetts, last month, told The Washington Post on Sunday that Leavitt, 28, was once “like a younger sister” to her.
“I made a mistake there, in trusting,” said Ferreira, who is currently being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.
Ferreira, who came to the United States at age 6, was stopped by ICE agents while she was on her way to pick up her 11-year-old son from school, her attorney told the Daily Beast. Since her detention, the White House has moved to distance Leavitt’s New Hampshire family from her, with insiders repeatedly claiming that Leavitt has not spoken to her nephew’s mother in “years.”
But Ferreira said that just weeks before her arrest, she was on the sidelines at her son’s recreational football game alongside Karoline’s parents and brother.
“I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister,” she told the Post. “Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
Leavitt has become a prominent public defender of former President Donald Trump’s sweeping mass-deportation agenda, but her previously close relationship with Ferreira undercuts the hardline anti-immigration image she presents in public.
According to the report, White House officials have aggressively tried to separate Leavitt from Ferreira, even boosting a Department of Homeland Security statement that incorrectly described Ferreira as a “criminal” with a prior arrest for “battery.”
Ferreira’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, has called those claims outright false. No publicly available court records indicate that Ferreira has ever been arrested.
Leavitt’s brother Michael—Ferreira’s ex-fiancé—has also claimed she never lived with her son, despite filing New Hampshire court records in 2015 listing both Ferreira and their child at the same address.
Pomerleau said the Leavitt family knew Ferreira was in the process of obtaining a green card that would grant her permanent U.S. residency. She has lived in the country since childhood and was granted protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era program that shields certain immigrants from deportation.
The attorney further alleged that Ferreira was deliberately targeted, claiming Michael had previously threatened her with deportation following their 2015 breakup.
Since Ferreira was taken into custody, Michael and Karoline’s father, Bob Leavitt, have urged her to “self deport” and try to return legally later—a move Pomerleau described as a “trap,” noting that under federal law, leaving the U.S. now could bar her from lawfully reentering for ten years.
On Wednesday, a disturbing video emerged showing Ferreira being detained by ICE last month. The 90-second clip shows her driving a sedan through a parking lot when at least five unmarked vehicles with tinted windows suddenly surround her car—a tactic Pomerleau argues underscores how targeted the operation was.
As Ferreira searched her purse for her license, her attorney said one agent asked, “Are you Bruna?” Without presenting a warrant, masked agents ordered her out of the vehicle, pushed her against a car, and handcuffed her within seconds. Another agent then got behind the wheel of her car and drove it away.
Ferreira told the Post that Michael and Bob were among the few people who knew her daily schedule and address.
“The thought of my son waiting for me at the school car pickup line and having no one to be there to pick him up is the thing that I keep replaying in my head,” she said through tears. “It’s just very unfortunate that this is the way that things have transpired.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Michael for comment. In a statement to the Post last week, he said: “I had no involvement in her being picked up by ice. I have no control over that and had no involvement in that whatsoever.”
Court records show Michael has his own criminal history. In 2009, at age 19, he was found guilty of drunken driving and fined $620. Two years later, he was arrested for disorderly conduct in Miami, though those charges were later dropped, the Post reported.
