From her confinement in a remote detention center in Louisiana, Bruna Ferreira recounted all the ways she said she has tried to maintain a friendly relationship with the family of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. After all, Ferreira shares a child with Leavitt’s brother.
The Brazilian immigrant selected Leavitt to be her son’s godmother. She signed off on her son’s trip to the White House Easter egg hunt this spring. And she said she “moved mountains” to ensure he could attend Leavitt’s wedding in January.
Arrested Nov. 12 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ferreira, 33, said it is insulting to sit in orange prison scrubs facing possible removal to Brazil after spending most of her life in the United States while the Trump administration paints her as a criminal. She is being detained for being in the United States illegally, a civil violation, after overstaying a visa when she was a child.
“I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister,” she said Thursday in a video interview with The Washington Post. “I made a mistake there, in trusting. … Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
Since her arrest, the White House media office has portrayed Ferreira as an absentee mother who had not been in Karoline Leavitt’s orbit in years. The White House issued a statement that said Ferreira had not spoken to Leavitt in years and that Ferreira had never lived with her son. The White House also shared a Department of Homeland Security statement that called Ferreira a “criminal,” with a previous arrest for “battery,” though it has not responded to repeated requests for supporting documentation.
Court records, family photos and Ferreira’s account tell a different story.
Ferreira said she met Michael Leavitt at a nightclub. They fell in love, got engaged and had a child, living together in New Hampshire. Their relationship fell into turmoil and instead of marrying, they broke up in 2015. Through the years they have shared caregiving responsibilities for their son, now 11, according to Ferreira and court records.
While it is not uncommon for the White House and DHS to make disparaging statements about undocumented immigrants, Ferreira said she was offended by their remarks. Her son is a Leavitt, and she said she sees that side of the family frequently while visiting the boy or cheering him on at school or in sports. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who Ferreira said was once like a younger sister to her, is among the most vociferous champions of President Donald Trump’s campaign to deport millions of immigrants.
Ferreira’s arrest before Thanksgiving drew nationwide attention because of her connection to Karoline Leavitt and prompted questions about why she was targeted. A longtime resident of Massachusetts, Ferreira came to America in 1998 at age 6 to join her parents after being raised by her grandmother in Brazil. At one point Ferreira faced possible deportation, but in 2012 she became eligible for an Obama-era program for undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. This year, as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration restarted her deportation case, according to Ferreira’s lawyers. Most of her family has legal status, but Ferreira has not been able to complete that process, her lawyers said.
Ferreira said the White House claims that she had never lived with her child are “disgusting” and false. Before her arrest, she said, her schedule consisted of work managing cleaning and clothing businesses, going to yoga class, and spending time with her son. She said she takes him to Dave & Buster’s, drives him to school, cheers at his sports games and stocks his bedroom with teddy bears, video games and his boxing gloves, “everything a young boy needs.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the discrepancies between their descriptions of Ferreira and the court records. DHS has not explained why Ferreira was arrested when the administration says it is focusing on detaining violent criminals. Her lawyers contend that video indicates officers were specifically out in search of Ferreira when they detained her.
Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, said she has no criminal record. He says DHS may be alluding to a 2008 incident when she was summoned to juvenile court after a fight with another girl outside a Dunkin’ Donuts over $8. He said Ferreira was never arrested and the case was dismissed. Because it was in juvenile court, he said it was not a criminal matter and it was supposed to be confidential. She was 16 at the time.
Michael Leavitt, 35, echoed the White House’s allegation that she had never lived with her son, in text messages this week with The Post. But in court records he filed in New Hampshire in 2015, he wrote that they shared a home and listed them at the same address. Ferreira also mentioned their shared condo in a 2014 newspaper article after Leavitt won $1 million playing fantasy football. He did not respond to questions about the discrepancy. Leavitt is a former high school star athlete, is married and helps run his family’s used-car and truck business in New Hampshire.
Ferreira’s legal status had long been a point of contention in her relationship with Michael Leavitt. After they broke up, Ferreira said in court records that Michael Leavitt had in the past threatened to try to get her deported.
In the text messages, Michael Leavitt denied seeking to have Ferreira deported.
“I had no involvement in her being picked up by ice,” he wrote Wednesday to The Post. “I have no control over that and had no involvement in that whatsoever.”
Ferreira says he and his father, Bob Leavitt, have in recent weeks told her sister that Ferreira should “self deport,” and try to return legally, a move her lawyers say would be disastrous: Under federal law, Ferreira would be barred from coming back to the United States for a decade. Bob Leavitt did not respond to requests for comment.
“It’s a trap,” Pomerleau said.
Ferreira said she dreamed of attending Harvard Law School and becoming a lawyer when she was younger but because she was in the country illegally she had far fewer opportunities than her younger brother and sister, who were born in the United States.
Eventually, she was able to get a work permit through the 2012 program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which also temporarily protected recipients from removal. After graduating from high school, she started two businesses, a cleaning service and a Brazilian bikini shop called Poor Little Rich Girl. She married her high school sweetheart, but that relationship was unraveling when she met Leavitt.
Michael Leavitt is from a close-knit family with deep roots in New Hampshire. He also had legal issues: He was charged twice in New Hampshire with underage alcohol possession, resulting in a fine and then a guilty plea to a downgraded town ordinance violation.
In 2009, at 19, he was found guilty of drunken driving and fined $620. In 2011, Miami Beach police arrested him for disorderly conduct, alleging that he and another man were fighting in the middle of the street, stopping traffic. The charges were dropped, court records show.
Leavitt said he has been the more consistent and responsible parent in his son’s life and accused The Post in a text message of “trying to use this whole situation to push a narrative to smear me.”
Michael Leavitt answered questions by text message and did not answer calls or respond to requests to speak by telephone.
Ferreira gave birth to their son in March 2014. Eight months later, Leavitt won $1 million in a fantasy football contest. The smiling couple, then in their early 20s, posed for a photograph in their local newspaper alongside their infant son. Ferreira told a reporter she felt grateful.
“We don’t really need much,” she said, wearing a T-shirt advertising the Leavitt family business selling cars and trucks. “We have our health. We have a nice condo. We really are blessed.”
Months later, the couple ended their engagement. The custody battle over their son soon turned acrimonious.
In court, Ferreira and Leavitt traded allegations of abuse and neglect. In April 2015, Leavitt sought primary custody of their son in a New Hampshire court, alleging that Ferreira had pushed Leavitt during an argument when the couple took a trip to Florida. He said she returned home without him, collected their son from his grandparents, and threatened to take him with her to Brazil.
Ferreira denied the claims and in court filings accused Leavitt of abuse, saying on the day of her baby shower he had drunkenly pushed her, punched walls and broken doors. After he won the $1 million, she alleged in court that he cheated on her and gambled away thousands of dollars. Ferreira’s lawyer said in a May 2015 court filing that Leavitt also “threatened to contact Immigration in an effort to have her deported.”
Leavitt has denied those allegations. Over the past decade, a series of judges have ordered the couple to share custody and resolve their differences outside of court.
In April 2020, Ferreira returned to court alleging Michael Leavitt owed her thousands of dollars in child support and was refusing to let her spend time with her son. She also wrote that Michael Leavitt had “used intimidation” based on her “immigration status” to discourage her from visiting the boy. Leavitt denied the allegations in court records.
Days later, family court Judge Polly Hall ordered Leavitt to share custody as required by the parenting plan. In 2021, the couple agreed their son would live with his father during the week while he attended school in New Hampshire. Ferreira would visit and take him home with her most weekends, court records show. Ferreira also had permission to take him to Brazil during summer vacation and to secure dual citizenship for him there, court filings show.
In 2022, Leavitt said in a text message this week to The Post, Ferreira was investigated for neglect by the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services. Department officials declined to comment because such cases are confidential. State court records show that Ferreira at first struggled with unemployment. Her son was enrolled in Mass Health at one point, an insurance program for low-income residents.
According to police reports, Ferreira called authorities in June 2022, saying her mother had picked up Ferreira’s son from a babysitter without her permission. Police alleged Ferreira’s mother told them she was worried about the conditions and that Ferreira had left him with strange men. She turned him over to Leavitt’s father. Police records allege that Ferreira had been living in “squalor” in a once stately mansion in the coastal Massachusetts town of Cohasset. Officers said they found rotten food in the fridge, trash piled up and only some rooms had electricity and running water.
Ferreira told Cohasset police that she had taken a job as a caretaker in the house with broken windows and doors in exchange for free rent. She said she’d left her son in the care of a friend while she went on a job interview. Police said they did not file charges against her, and she said they could leave the child with his grandfather.
In an interview with The Post, Ferreira’s mother, Selma Valeriano, denied telling police she was worried about her grandson. She said she had gone to check in on him out of an abundance of caution because her daughter had struggled to find child care and left him with a friend that Valeriano did not know. She took the boy to McDonald’s and then arranged to drop him off with his grandfather.
In the interview from ICE detention, Ferreira described the incident as a “big misunderstanding” at a time when she had just left a relationship and her life was in flux.
Michael Leavitt said in a text message that the episode was “pretty frightening stuff” and an example of his concerns about leaving his son in Ferreira’s care. Bob Leavitt, his father, did not respond to requests for comment. But Ferreira said her home life is more stable now; she is in a solid relationship and lives in a safe home for her son.
Michael Leavitt did not raise the incident in their New Hampshire custody case, and Ferreira’s visitation rights were unchanged.
Via text, Leavitt said he wants Ferreira to have access to their son: “I want my son to have a relationship with his mother as I always have shown that,” he wrote.
But that would be difficult if Ferreira is removed from the country, her lawyers said.
On Nov. 12, Ferreira said, she had dropped off her son at school in New Hampshire. She was arrested that afternoon, when she said she was leaving to pick him up.
“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 said, wiping away tears. “It’s just very unfortunate that this is the way that things have transpired.”
Afterward, she said ICE shuttled her like “cattle” to Vermont, Philadelphia, Texas and finally to Louisiana, where she spends her days surrounded by hundreds of other women facing deportation. After Telemundo, a Spanish-language TV station, broadcast her case, she said detainees peppered her with questions about her relationship to Karoline Leavitt.
“Why are you here? Did she put you here?” she said they asked, referring to the press secretary. “Did she not like you?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said she responds.
Ferreira said she has always admired Karoline Leavitt’s drive and success. “Obviously we’re not BFFs and we’re not FaceTiming,” she said. But she rejected the depiction of a nonexistent relationship. Ferreira said she could not recall when they last spoke, but said she met Karoline Leavitt’s now husband and is constantly in the family’s orbit because of their son. Her lawyer, Pomerleau, said it is false that they have not spoken in years.
A video of Ferreira’s arrest obtained by TMZ shows her pulling out of a parking lot in front of her home in the Boston suburb of Revere when four unmarked SUVs surrounded the car and prevented her vehicle from leaving. Officers surrounded her and quickly led her away in handcuffs.
Ferreira said that she was driving a borrowed car and that Bob and Michael Leavitt were among a handful of people who knew her schedule and where she lived, though she does not know whether they had any role in what happened.
She said her mind often wanders to earlier that morning when she drove her son to school and he lingered in the car beside her. He told her, “Mom, just five more minutes.”
“No, honey,” she recalled saying, and pressed him to get to class on time.
Now she wishes she had let him stay. She said she has been unable to speak with him since then, despite multiple attempts to reach him through Michael Leavitt, who did not respond to questions about the calls.
“He needs me right now, tucking him into bed and taking him shopping for Christmas,” Ferreira said. “He doesn’t need me in 20 years. He needs me now.”
Aaron Schaffer and Arelis R. Hernández contributed to this report
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