A relative of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Louisiana on Monday night, her attorney said Tuesday.
A federal immigration judge, Cynthia Goodman, ordered that Bruna Ferreira, the 33-year-old mother of Leavitt’s nephew and godson, be freed from detention in Basile, Louisiana, on $1,500 bond, according to her attorney, Todd Pomerleau. He said he believed Ferreira was on a plane on Tuesday morning but did not give her destination. The White House did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Ferreira was born in Brazil and received temporary Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status — an Obama-era program that allows undocumented young people to receive temporary relief from deportation and allow them the ability to work — in 2012 after coming to the United States on a visa at age 6, according to Pomerleau. She has a child with the press secretary’s brother, Michael Leavitt, who was born in March 2014, according to the Washington Post. Ferreira and Michael Leavitt were engaged before they ended their relationship a decade ago, she told the Washington Post in an interview. Since their split, she said, they have shared caregiving responsibilities for their son.
Ferreira was arrested outside her apartment building in Revere, Massachusetts, on Nov. 12. Since her arrest, the Trump administration has alleged, without evidence, that Ferreira is a “criminal”; that she has never lived with her son; and that she has not spoken to Karoline Leavitt in years. But Pomerleau contests those characterizations.
“There was no big war going on between [Ferreira and the Leavitts],” the attorney said Monday night. “She’s been part of their life for years.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called Ferreira “a criminal illegal alien” in a statement to MS NOW on Tuesday morning and said she had overstayed a tourist visa that required her to leave in 1999.
The spokesperson said 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.”
The DHS spokesperson also claimed that Ferreira had “a previous arrest for battery.” Pomerleau said that refers to a juvenile charge Ferreira faced after fighting with someone outside a Dunkin’ Donuts over $8 and that she was not arrested in the incident.
“The only arrest she’s had in her life is by ICE, who illegally arrested her,” he said, adding that the allegation “is libelous and slanderous.”
Pomerleau said the information appears to have been leaked given that juvenile case records in Massachusetts are confidential and can only be released on a judge’s order.
The attorney also called Ferreira’s arrest in November “suspicious” and said he does not know how ICE found her. A video obtained by TMZ appears to show several agents swarming Ferreira’s car as she tried to leave her apartment complex.
“She was driving a vehicle not registered to her. They knew exactly where she was going to be, in an apartment building that hardly anyone knows she lived in,” he told MS NOW. (Ferreira told the Washington Post that she was borrowing the car.) The DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about how they accessed Ferreira’s records or located her at the time of her arrest. Michael Leavitt told the Washington Post by text that he had “no involvement in her being picked up by ICE.” “I want my son to have a relationship with his mother as I always have shown that,” he added. Ferreira, for her part, told the Washington Post that she regretted her decision to make Karoline Leavitt her son’s godmother. “I made a mistake there, in trusting,” she told the newspaper. “Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
