A woman from Brazil with family ties to the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana, the authorities said.
Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the mother of Ms. Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew, was pulled over and arrested on Nov. 12 on her way to pick up her son from school in a suburb of Boston, Ms. Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, said.
Mr. Pomerleau said that Ms. Ferreira, 33, is seeking a green card and was arrested without due process. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Ms. Ferreira was in the country illegally and had entered the United States from Brazil when she was a child, on a B-2 tourist visa that required her to leave the country by June 6, 1999.
Ms. Ferreira was previously engaged to Ms. Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt, but they never married, Mr. Pomerleau said. They have shared custody of their son, who lives with Mr. Leavitt in New Hampshire, he added. Ms. Ferreira lives in Revere, Mass.
Mr. Leavitt said in a text message, “My only concern has always been the safety, well being, and privacy of my son.”
A person familiar with the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private details, said that Ms. Leavitt and Ms. Ferreira had not spoken in years.
Mr. Pomerleau said that after Ms. Ferreira’s parents brought her to the United States as a child, she received temporary protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. She had not been able to renew her DACA status and was no longer under its protection at the time of her arrest, Mr. Pomerleau said, because she was seeking a permanent form of legal status, a green card. She had attended a green card hearing in the spring, he said, and was waiting for a final hearing.
The Homeland Security Department said that Ms. Ferreira was being held at the South Louisiana ICE processing center. Ms. Ferreira had been previously arrested on suspicion of battery, the D.H.S. statement said, but it did not specify if she was charged after the arrest.
The D.H.S. statement described Ms. Ferreira as a criminal, but Mr. Pomerleau said that she has no criminal record. “Show us the proof,” he said.
Ms. Ferreira’s sister is a United States citizen and her mother has a green card, he said.
“These aren’t criminal illegal aliens. These are taxpayers, working mothers,” Mr. Pomerleau said. “They were living the American dream and now it’s a dystopian nightmare that we’re dealing with.”
Ms. Ferreira’s sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to help cover the legal costs and other expenses related to Ms. Ferreira’s detention. On the fund-raiser page, Ms. Dos Santos Rodrigues said her sister was brought to the United States in December 1998.
The Trump administration is seeking to remake the country’s immigration system and has aggressively targeted immigrants for arrest and deportation, taking an expansive view of who can be subjected to these enforcement acts. People who are in the country legally or are attempting to get legal status have been swept up in the crackdown.
As Department of Homeland Security resources have been diverted to immigration enforcement, the agency has made fewer arrests for drug crimes and seized fewer weapons than it did the previous fiscal year, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Mr. Pomerleau said that aside from Ms. Ferreira’s ties to the White House, this case was in line with the type his firm, Rubin Pomerleau, sees daily. Immigrants are arrested without warning or explanation, then are quickly sent to immigration detention centers far from their homes and loved ones while trying to get in contact with lawyers.
Jeffrey Rubin, another lawyer at the firm, said that there has always been injustice in the immigration system, but it has skyrocketed under the Trump administration. “The volume and the just lack of complete discretion is what’s been new,” he said.
Georgia Gee contributed research.
Amanda Holpuch covers breaking news and other topics.
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