White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaking at a press briefing in the White House Press Briefing Room in Washington, DC.Michael Brochstein/SIPA USA/AP
Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, has been released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after a US immigration judge on Monday ordered her release on a $1,500 bond.
Ferreira, who was born in Brazil and still faces possible deportation, was arrested on November 12 in Massachusetts on the way to pick up her 11-year-old son from school and was sent to South Louisiana ICE Processing Center.
The White House has since attempted to villainize Ferreira as an absentee mother and a “criminal illegal alien” despite the lack of public records showing any criminal convictions. Ferreira stated in an exclusive interview with the Washington Post on Sunday that these were “disgusting” lies; she told the Post that she had even chosen Leavitt to be her son’s godmother.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to respond to questions about whether Ferreira’s release signaled any changes in policy regarding bond releases for detained undocumented immigrants. (DHS, under the Trump administration, has typically opposed such releases.) Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin instead replied, “The facts remain [Ferreira] has a previous arrest for battery.”
Ferreira emigrated from Brazil with her parents when she was about 6 years old. She obtained temporary protection from deportation and work authorization through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program. But as my colleague Isabela Dias wrote in November, DACA recipients, who were long promised a safety net, are now being targeted by the Trump administration for deportation.
Those attacks include detention and more insidious methods. As Isabela reports, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services now excludes DACA recipients from coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace, and in July, the Department of Education launched an investigation into five universities over scholarships for students with DACA status.
