The Trump administration has suffered a significant setback in its effort to deport the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew.
A judge has allowed Bruna Ferreira to post bail of $1,500 as she contests ICE’s push to return her to her native Brazil, where she has not lived since she was six, her attorneys told The Washington Post.
That figure is reportedly the lowest-permitted bond amount for migrant detainees.
Ferreira, 33, had been held in ICE custody in Louisiana—more than 1,500 miles from her home in Revere, Massachusetts, and her 11-year-old son. Her release came much quicker than others in custody in Louisiana, including the MAGA-supporting Danish dad of five who was detained over a paperwork error, who spent four months in lock-up before even being assigned a judge.
Lucas Vega, a lawyer representing the Department of Homeland Security, did not object to the judge’s decision to release Ferreira, the Post reports. He agreed that Ferreira is “not a danger to society or a flight risk and should be released.”
Ferreira’s attorney has accused the White House of smearing her. She shares custody of her son with Leavitt’s brother, Michael, with whom she was once engaged.
While the White House has distanced its press secretary from Ferreira, who it alleges has a past battery charge and is no longer close with the Leavitts, her loved ones have painted a different picture.
One of Ferreira’s friends told the Daily Beast she maintained a healthy co-parenting relationship with Michael Leavitt, 35, for years after their 2015 split, but it became rockier when he remarried in 2022. The friend said their son lived primarily with Ferreira, contradicting a claim that the boy lived in New Hampshire full-time with his father.
The White House said in a previous statement that Leavitt and Ferreira were not close and had not spoken in years. However, Ferreira told the Post that the 28-year-old Trump official was once “like a younger sister” to her.
“I made a mistake there, in trusting,” she told the paper.
Ferreira added, “I asked Karoline to be godmother over my only sister. Why they’re creating this narrative is beyond my wildest imagination.”
The Trump administration has not released documentation supporting its claim that Ferreira has a previous battery charge. Records show that she has no criminal record in Massachusetts, where she has long lived.
Neither the White House nor Ferreira’s attorney responded to a request for comment Monday. Karoline Leavitt has not spoken publicly about the matter.
There has been much attention on the arrest of Ferreira, who overstayed a tourist visa as a child but had lived and worked in the U.S. with legal protections as part of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The Post reported that she is no longer a DACA recipient, which requires members to pay a $555 fee to file a renewal every two years to maintain that status. DACA protects its members against deportation and allows them to obtain a driver’s license and legally work in the United States.
A friend of Ferreira’s told the Daily Beast that they felt the arrest, in which ICE agents were captured on video swarming her car on Nov. 12, was a “targeted” one.
Ferreira’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said she was detained while driving to pick her son up from school. As a house cleaner, Ferreira’s friend said that her schedule changes by the day, and leaving to pick up her son would be one of the few times her whereabouts would be known by the Leavitts.
Pomerleau also believes that Ferreira was targeted. When swarmed by agents, before she even pulled out her ID, he claims that Ferreira was asked by an officer, “Are you Bruna?”
Masked agents then ordered Ferreira out of the vehicle, placed her in handcuffs, and whisked her away. Shortly after, an agent can be seen entering her car and driving it out of the camera’s view.
Ferreira’s sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, told the Boston Globe that some in the Leavitt family had pushed her to “self-deport” back to a country where she has no home and hardly speaks the language.
“They just kept saying, ’Tell her to self-deport,’” Dos Santos Rodrigues told the Globe. “Self-deport to where? Brazil is not her home. They’re trying to push it off as a vacation. That’s not a vacation. Bruna barely speaks the language.”
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