Lawyer says Leavitt targeted in Trump's DACA crackdown

Alex Woodward, The Independent

Bruna Ferreira was driving to pick up her 11-year-old son from school earlier this month when she was suddenly surrounded by federal officers. Since then, the 33-year-old Brazilian mother has been detained inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Louisiana, hundreds of miles from her home in Massachusetts. The story of her November 12 arrest and detention is deeply familiar to hundreds of immigrant families embroiled in legal battles and deportation threats under Donald Trump's administration, but new reporting from Ferreira's case has revealed her ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose brother is the father of Ferreira's child.

"There's an irony here," said Jeffrey Rubin, whose firm is representing Ferreira. "She's somebody that has generated publicity because of her relationship to somebody who is part of the inner circle of the White House, but at the end of the day, that she's just one of many thousands and thousands of people that are getting this treatment on a daily basis in this administration," he told The Independent. 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. That would place Ferreira among more than 20 DACA recipients and dozens of young immigrants who have been arrested or detained by immigration authorities since January, according to advocacy campaign Home Is Here.

Her arrest is among many in a "random and cruel mass deportation campaign" under an administration that has performed warrantless searches, arrested and deported immigrants without due process, and stripped legal protections for tens of thousands of people who were allowed to live and work in the country, according to Rubin. "It's outrageous and abhorrent, and the rhetoric alone is disgusting," he said.

Trump's government-wide anti-immigration agenda has sought to dramatically reshape DACA, which Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin recently stressed "does not confer any form of legal status in this country." DACA is not necessarily a path to permanent legal status, and new applications have been suspended for nearly a decade since the first Trump administration unsuccessfully sought to end the program altogether. But there is "a strong bipartisan consensus that people like her should have a path to stay," according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with immigration advocacy and policy group the American Immigration Council.

Ferreira was previously engaged to Michael Leavitt, the brother of Karoline Leavitt, but they broke up more than 10 years ago, according to the family. Ferreira and Leavitt share custody of their son, who lives with Michael and his wife in New Hampshire. When Michael won $1 million from a DraftKings contest eight months after their son was born, Ferreira said the couple was not in want of anything.

"I need the lights fixed on the back of my car," she told The Cullman Times in 2014. "And we need a lamp for my son's room. Other than that we don't really need much. We have our health. We have a nice condo. We really are blessed." They separated shortly after. Her younger sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, launched a GoFundMe to raise money for her legal defense. "Anyone who knows Bruna knows the kind of person she is," Dos Santos Rodrigues wrote. "She is hardworking, kind, and always the first to offer help when someone needs it. Whether it's supporting family, friends, or even strangers, Bruna has a heart that puts others before herself."

She told the Boston Globe that Michael Leavitt and his father, Bob Leavitt, had urged Ferreira to "self-deport" after her arrest. "Brazil is not her home," Dos Santos Rodrigues said. "They're trying to push it off as a vacation. That's not a vacation. Bruna barely speaks the language." Karoline Leavitt, who has posted several photos with her nephew on social media, has not reached out to Dos Santos Rodrigues or her family, she said. Her nephew also met Trump earlier this year inside the White House, according to photographs shared by the Leavitts on social media. "If she were to help in any way, if she were willing to do anything to help us, she would have reached out by now," Dos Santos Rodrigues told the Boston Globe. "I understand the policies and how it looks. But I also think when it comes to family, you put certain things aside. I don't care who you work for."

In a message to reporters, Michael Leavitt said, "My only concern has always been the safety, well being, and privacy of my son." Homeland Security, meanwhile, has described the mother of Karoline Leavitt's nephew as a "criminal illegal alien" who has been accused of battery. Her lawyers said they have "found nothing" to support those allegations. Officials also accused Ferreira of overstaying a tourist visa that required her to leave the country in 1999, when she was seven years old.