- Bruna Ferreira, a DACA recipient and Leavitt's former relative, was violently arrested by ICE during a school pickup and remains detained in Louisiana.
- Her attorney alleges she was targeted, disputing DHS claims of criminality, and suggests family betrayal influenced the raid.
- Ferreira fears for her 11-year-old son, accusing personal and political forces of turning family ties into tools of deportation policy.
In a story that’s equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, Bruna Ferreira, a 33-year-old Brazilian immigrant who’s called the United States home since she was just 6 years old, is speaking out from behind the bars of an ICE detention center.
Her message? It’s aimed squarely at White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—the woman she once saw as “like a younger sister.”
Now, amid the harsh glare of the Trump administration’s mass deportation push, Ferreira says she’s been betrayed by the very family she trusted, left to wonder how her 11-year-old son is coping without her.
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Details of the Incident
Ferreira’s ordeal began last month in Revere, Massachusetts, a quiet suburb north of Boston.
She was driving to pick up her boy from school when unmarked ICE vehicles—five of them, with tinted windows—swarmed her sedan in a parking lot.
A chilling 90-second video that surfaced this week captures the chaos: As Ferreira fumbles in her purse for her license, a masked agent barks, “Are you Bruna?”
Before she can fully respond, they’re yanking her from the car, slamming her against a vehicle, and cuffing her wrists.
No warrant in sight. Another agent hops in her ride and peels out, leaving her stunned and alone.
She’s been in custody ever since, shipped off to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile—a facility notorious for its remote location and grim conditions.
What makes this sting even more is the tangled family web.
The Family Ties
Ferreira is the mother of Leavitt’s nephew, the child she shares with Leavitt’s older brother, Michael.
Back in the day, things were tight. Just weeks before the arrest, Ferreira was right there in the stands at her son’s recreational football game, cheering alongside Karoline’s parents and Michael himself.
She even asked the then-28-year-old Leavitt to be godmother to her only sister.
“I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister,” Ferreira recounted in a phone interview from detention, her voice cracking over the line.
But that closeness? It’s ancient history now, shattered by a bitter breakup and the cold machinery of immigration enforcement.
Ferreira had been living under the protections of DACA, the Obama-era program that shields certain childhood arrivals from deportation.
She was on the cusp of something better—a green card that would finally lock in permanent residency.
Then came the raid.
Attorney Believes She Was Targeted
Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, is blunt about it: This wasn’t random.
“She was targeted,” he told reporters, slamming White House claims that painted Ferreira as some kind of “criminal” with a rap sheet for battery.
Pomerleau says that’s flat-out false—no court records back it up.
In fact, he’s pointing fingers at Michael Leavitt, alleging the ex-fiancé threatened her with deportation right after their 2015 split.
Dive a little deeper into those family court files from New Hampshire, and the picture gets messier.
Michael listed Ferreira and their son at the same address back in 2015, but he’s since claimed she never even lived with the kid.
Fast-forward to now, and Michael’s dad—Bob Leavitt—has been advising Ferreira to “self-deport” and try coming back legally.
Pomerleau calls that a “trap,” noting federal rules would bar her from reentering for a full decade.
It’s the kind of advice that sounds helpful on the surface but lands like a gut punch in reality.
From the White House, the response has been a frantic game of distance. Insiders are whispering that Leavitt hasn’t uttered a word to her nephew’s mom in “years.”
The administration even boosted a Department of Homeland Security line labeling Ferreira a criminal—again, with zero evidence to show for it.
Michael himself tried to wash his hands of it in a statement to the New York Post last week: “I had no involvement in her being picked up by ICE. I have no control over that and had no involvement in that whatsoever.”
Ferreira, though, isn’t buying the spin. Speaking from her cell, she laid it bare: “I made a mistake there, in trusting.” Her words hang heavy, laced with disbelief.
“Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
And then, the part that hits hardest—the image she can’t shake: “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 paused, wiping tears as the interview wrapped.
“It’s just very unfortunate that this is the way that things have transpired.”
A Division Created by Politics?
Leavitt’s perch in the briefing room adds a brutal irony to all this.
As Trump’s mouthpiece on the deportation drive, she’s been front and center, defending policies that rip families like this one to shreds.
Her own past isn’t spotless either—brother Michael’s got a 2009 DUI conviction (fined $620) and a 2011 disorderly conduct bust in Miami that got dropped.
But for Ferreira, the personal betrayal cuts deepest.
As her case drags on, questions swirl: Was this payback from a jilted ex?
Political collateral in Trump’s border wars? Or just the random cruelty of a system that’s deported thousands like her?
Pomerleau’s vowing to fight, but with Leavitt’s influence looming, the odds feel stacked.
For now, Ferreira clings to memories of football games and family barbecues, wondering if “sister” was ever more than a word.
This isn’t just one woman’s nightmare—it’s a stark window into how immigration battles bleed into bedrooms and backyards, turning kin against kin.
And with more raids on the horizon, how many more stories like Bruna’s are waiting in the wings?
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
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