Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, spent 26 days in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. Six days after her release, Ferreira spoke to MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton about the experience.
“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes, if I didn’t hear it with my own two ears,” she said. “It’s not civil.”
While being held at an ICE detention center in southern Louisiana, she shared the space with pregnant women and women who had been seeking medical attention for weeks, Ferreira said. “The only thing that I can think of is I’m so lucky that I’m healthy,” she said.
Inside, the detention center was freezing, and she and other detainees were only allowed outside for brief periods. “It’s just inhumane. It’s cruel. I can’t understand how people don’t see that this is a problem, especially because I’ve been a law-abiding citizen my entire life,” Ferreira said.
The 33-year-old was arrested by federal agents in Massachusetts on Nov. 12 while driving to pick up her son from school.
Ferreira’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told MS NOW that she was barricaded by masked and armed agents in five vehicles who surrounded her car and repeatedly asked, “Are you Bruna?”
Ferreira said that at first she didn’t believe the Leavitt family was involved in her arrest. Now she’s not so sure.
Ferreira said that at first she didn’t believe the Leavitt family was involved in her arrest. Now she’s not so sure. “It wasn’t an accident. How would they know her name, if it’s a random traffic stop?” Pomerleau said.
“The more that I look at all of the coincidences, you know, like how they knew that I was leaving to pick up Michael from school, how they knew my address,” Ferreira told Hylton, “how can someone know where I am, exactly where I’m going? You know, it just doesn’t make any sense.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called Ferreira “a criminal illegal alien” in a statement to MS NOW last Tuesday, adding that in 1999 she overstayed a tourist visa that required her to leave the U.S.
The statement claimed that a “Biden-appointed judge” granted Ferreira bond and that her deportation proceedings will continue, adding, “She will have periodic mandatory check-ins with ICE law enforcement to ensure she is abiding by the terms of her release.”
Ferreira told MS NOW that she came into the country legally on a visa from Brazil at just 6 years old to live with her parents. In 2012, she received temporary Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status under the program enacted during the Obama administration that allows undocumented young people to receive temporary relief from deportation and to work. Since then, Ferreira said she has been working toward obtaining full legal citizenship.
DHS also alleged that in addition to violating immigration laws, Ferreira had a “previous arrest for battery.”









