The mother of Karoline Leavitt’s nephew has not been able to see her son since she was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in a case that has placed the family of a key official in Donald Trump’s administration into the president’s mass deportation campaign.
Bruna Ferreira, who is originally from Brazil, is “heartbroken” for her son, she told CNN Friday.
The entire situation “doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I’m trying to understand and have faith that there’s some logical explanation behind any of this, but there isn’t. I’m not the first. I’m surely not going to be the last. There’s thousands of women and families and children being separated daily. Where does it end? When does it stop?”
She said she has not spoken to the White House press secretary, whose brother is the father of her 11-year-old son, since she returned to Massachusetts after her arrest and detention inside a Louisiana ICE facility more than 1,000 miles from home.
“Just because you went to a Catholic school, doesn’t make you a good Catholic,” Ferreira said, addressing Leavitt. “You’re a mother. You are a mother now. And you should know. How would you feel if you were in my shoes? How would you feel if somebody did this to you?”
Ferreira’s parents emigrated from Brazil and brought their young daughter with them in 1998 when she was roughly 6 years old. Her two younger siblings were born in the United States.
She received temporary legal protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that has shielded tens of thousands of people who arrived in the country as children without legal status, and she was in the process of obtaining a green card, according to her legal team.
Federal agents surrounded her car while she was driving her son to school on November 12, according to her attorneys and surveillance footage from the scene.
An immigration judge ordered her release last week on a $1,500 bond while she continues a legal battle to prevent her removal from the country under the Trump administration, which has repeatedly branded her a “criminal illegal alien.”
She is required to wear a GPS monitor and the boy’s father hasn’t brought him to see her, Ferreira told CNN.
Following her release, a spokesperson for Homeland Security once again labeled Ferreira a “criminal illegal alien” and said she will be required to attend “periodic mandatory check-ins with ICE law enforcement to ensure she is abiding by the terms of her release,” a spokesperson told The Independent.
“The Department of Homeland Security will continue to work to remove all aliens illegally present in the country as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson added.
But Ferreira does not appear to have had any criminal convictions. She was arrested for being in the United States without legal permission after overstaying a visa that expired when she was a child, according to her attorneys.
“I don’t even have a parking ticket, and I’m so proud of it,” she told CNN.
“I’m proud of my name, and I carry it like a badge of honor,” she added. “And now my child is sitting somewhere watching them broadcast this 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a child, he must be terrified.”
Asked about White House comments to The Washington Post that CNN anchor Erin Burnett said had portrayed Ferreira as an “absentee parent,” she replied: “Why?”
“Why lie? Because I have so many friends and family that have called me and said, ‘Why would anyone lie about this, when it’s 2025, we have a digital footprint of everything,” Ferreira said.
“I can’t wrap my mind around it,” she added. “It doesn’t make any sense. I’m just as lost as you are. And I’m hoping this interview gets us some answers.”
Her arrest is among many in a “random and cruel mass deportation campaign” under the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda, according to Jeffrey Rubin, whose firm is representing Ferreira.
“It’s outrageous and abhorrent, and the rhetoric alone is disgusting,” he told The Independent last month.
