Woman related to Karoline Leavitt is in ICE custody: Who is Bruna Caroline Ferreira and what’s her connection to the Press Secretary?
Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the mother White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, has been detained by ICE and is awaiting deportation.
President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants from the United States has swept up a woman with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Bruna Caroline Ferreira was arrested earlier this month in Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, which was first reported by Boston University public broadcaster and news platform WBUR.
She is currently being held US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a detention facility in Louisiana awaiting deportation. Ferreira is the mother of Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew, whom she shares with the press secretary’s brother, Michael Leavitt.
Bruna and Michael had been engaged in 2014, but separated sometime after that. According to reports based on sources at the White House, their son has been living with his father full time in New Hampshire since he was born.
Ferreira is a DACA recipient
Ferreira was brought to the United States as a child by her family in December 1998. Having entered on a tourist visa, she was required to leave in June 1999 when it expired.
However, “since then, she has done everything in her power to build a stable, honest life [in the US],” states a GoFundMe page set up by her sister Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues to help Ferreira, which CNN verified with Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau.
She received protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program some time after it was established in 2012. Ferreira is just one of several ‘Dreamers’ around the country that have been arrested as part of the nationwide immigration crackdown according to reporting by the Associated Press.
Department of Homeland Security says DACA doesn’t provide protections from deportation
When asked about any changes to the DACA program and the protections it confers, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the news agency that DACA recipients “are not automatically protected from deportations. DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country.”
Furthermore, they can lose their DACA status “for a number of reasons, including if they’ve committed a crime,” she added.
What crime did Ferreira commit?
When asked about the situation of Ferreira, McLaughlin said in a statement that Ferreira had a “previous arrest for battery.” However, WMUR reports that “no battery charges against Bruna Ferreira could be located in Massachusetts’ online court records.”
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