- Karoline Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew is separated from his mother after ICE arrested and detained Bruna Ferreira on November 12.
- Ferreira, a former DACA recipient who entered as a child, was flown over 1,500 miles to South Louisiana for removal proceedings.
- The arrest underscores family separations amid stricter immigration enforcement, prompting fundraising and uncertainty about legal outcomes.
In one of the most striking ironies of the post-election transition, the 11-year-old nephew of Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is spending the weeks before Christmas without his mother — because she was arrested and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on November 12.
Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the boy’s mother and the former sister-in-law of Karoline Leavitt, was picked up by ICE agents in the Boston area and is now being held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, more than 1,500 miles away from her son in New Hampshire.
Ferreira, 42, entered the U.S. legally as a child in 1998 on a tourist visa that expired the following year.
The FrankNez Media Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.
She later qualified for DACA protection under President Obama but lost that status during the first Trump administration when renewals became entangled in legal battles.
Her story—marked by years of striving for the American dream, a brief taste of stability through DACA, and now an uncertain fight against deportation—highlights the human stakes in the escalating national debate over borders and belonging.
Details of the Incident
Ferreira’s arrest on November 12 came without warning, just blocks from Boston’s bustling streets.
Agents from ICE swooped in, and within hours, the 42-year-old found herself transported across the country to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a sprawling facility hundreds of miles from the life she’s built in Massachusetts.
She’s been held there ever since, caught in the gears of removal proceedings that could upend everything.
This isn’t just any detention; it’s a stark reminder of how policy shifts can fracture families, especially as the incoming Trump team vows to ramp up enforcement.
To understand the depth of this saga, you have to rewind to 1998. Bruna was just a child when her parents brought her to the United States from Brazil, entering legally on a B2 tourist visa.
The family had dreams of a fresh start, but like so many, they overstayed.
That visa expired on June 6, 1999, thrusting young Bruna into a limbo that would define her adulthood.
She grew up piecing together a life here—working odd jobs, chasing education, and always keeping her head down.
For a while, hope flickered: In 2012, she qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era program that shielded “Dreamers” like her from deportation and granted work permits.
It was a lifeline, allowing her to breathe easier, to plan a future.
But stability proved fleeting. During Donald Trump’s first term, Ferreira hit a wall. Unable to renew her DACA status amid the program’s legal battles and backlogs, she slipped back into the shadows.
Undeterred, she didn’t give up. Today, she’s actively navigating the labyrinthine path to lawful permanent residency and, eventually, U.S. citizenship—a process that’s equal parts exhausting and expensive.
Friends and family describe her as the glue in any room: hardworking, endlessly kind, the one who’d drop everything to help a neighbor or a stranger.
“Anyone who knows Bruna knows the kind of person she is,” her sister would later write in a desperate online plea.
“She is hardworking, kind, and always the first to offer help when someone needs it. Whether it’s supporting family, friends, or even strangers, Bruna has a heart that puts others before herself.”
That heart, though, has been tested by personal storms as much as bureaucratic ones.
The Leavitt Family
A decade ago, Ferreira’s relationship with Michael Leavitt—brother to the rising GOP star Karoline Leavitt—fractured irreparably.
The couple split amid circumstances that remain private, but the fallout left their son, Michael Leavitt Jr., in his father’s care.
Now 11 years old, the boy has spent his entire life in New Hampshire, building memories with his dad and extended family, but never sharing a home with his mother.
It’s a separation that’s grown from choice to circumstance, and the two—Bruna and Michael—haven’t spoken in years.
For the child at the center of it all, the arrest has reopened old wounds.
He’s been counting down the days to the holidays, clinging to the slim hope that his mom might make it home for Christmas.
The news of Ferreira’s detention broke quietly at first, but it quickly gained traction through a family’s raw bid for support.
Her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover mounting legal fees—the kind that stack up fast when you’re fighting the full weight of the federal government.
In her post, Graziela painted a vivid portrait of a woman caught in an unfair system: “Bruna was brought to the United States by our parents in December of 1998, when she was just a child, entering on a visa.
Since then, she has done everything in her power to build a stable, honest life here. She has maintained her legal status through DACA, followed every requirement, and has always strived to do the right thing.”
She didn’t shy away from the emotional toll, adding, “Bruna’s absence has been especially painful for her 11-year-old son, Michael Leavitt Junior, who needs his mother and hopes every single day that she’ll be home in time for the holidays.”
The response has been overwhelming in its generosity. As of Wednesday morning, the fundraiser had surpassed $16,000, fueled by small donations from everyday folks and a jaw-dropping $5,000 from an anonymous benefactor.
It’s the kind of grassroots solidarity that makes you pause—strangers moved to action by a story that feels all too familiar in an era of family separations and border walls.Of course, this isn’t happening in a vacuum.
DHS Weighs In
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson underscored the administration’s stance without mincing words: “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation.”
It’s a policy line drawn in stone, one that doesn’t bend for backstories or broken families.
Ferreira’s prior brush with the law—a battery charge from years back—has only complicated her case, giving ICE the leverage they need to argue she’s no longer eligible for leniency.
Yet amid the policy talk, it’s the personal echoes that linger. Karoline Leavitt, the 27-year-old wunderkind who’s about to become the youngest press secretary in modern history, has stayed mum on her brother’s ex and the nephew they share.
Her rapid ascent—from Trump campaign spokesperson to White House powerhouse—has been a point of pride for the Leavitt clan, but this twist adds an unintended layer of irony.
A family intertwined with the very administration driving the deportations.
Will Leavitt’s proximity to power offer any quiet advocacy, or is this rift too deep, too distant?
As Bruna Ferreira awaits her next hearing from a detention center far from New England snow, her story serves as a microcosm of broader anxieties.
What Happens Next?
Thousands of former DACA recipients face similar fates—parents, partners, pillars of their communities, all teetering on the edge.
For Michael Jr., it’s simpler: He just wants his mom back.
In a season of gratitude and gatherings, that longing feels especially poignant, a quiet cry against the machinery of enforcement.
Whether legal maneuvers or public pressure can bridge this divide remains to be seen.
For now, one family’s holiday table sits a little emptier, and a nation’s immigration soul-searching presses on.
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
