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The mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s 11-year-old nephew has been arrested for alleged civil immigration violations and is in a Louisiana detention centre fighting deportation to her native Brazil, the woman’s lawyers said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the former fiancee of Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt, on November 12.

She was arrested after being pulled over on her way to pick up her son from school, according to Ferreira’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau.

“She was arrested, was never told why, and shipped to the South,” Pomerleau said in an interview today. “She deserves to be back with her family.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the arrest, saying that Ferreira has a criminal record and was previously arrested for battery.

The agency did not provide evidence of any criminal offences. Pomerleau denied that she had any criminal history.

“Under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The arrest comes as federal authorities are detaining record numbers of undocumented immigrants amid Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

In her role as White House spokeswoman, Leavitt has fiercely defended the stepped-up immigration enforcement operations and referred to an “invasion” of unauthorised immigrants. She did not respond to requests for comment about the arrest of her nephew’s mother.

Ferreira’s lawyers said Leavitt’s nephew had previously met Trump in the Oval Office. Members of the Leavitt family did not respond to requests for comment.

The Eagle-Tribune, a newspaper in Massachusetts, posted a photo of Michael Leavitt, Ferreira and their son from 2014 after Leavitt won US$1 million in a Draft Kings Fantasy Football contest.

In the photo, Ferreira wore a pink T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the family business, Leavitt Auto and Truck Sales, and her son wore a New England Patriots jersey.

Jeffrey Rubin, Pomerleau’s law partner, used the term “Shakespearean irony” to describe the situation, saying a close relative of a top Administration official is now being “traumatised” by Trump’s “cruel mass-deportation campaign”.

The Biden administration generally did not detain parents of young children. The current Administration provides little latitude for undocumented immigrants who are raising American children and have lived in the US for years.

“The difference is the sheer volume,” Rubin said of the ramp up in arrests. “The sheer shamelessness of it.”

Ferreira was driving from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to pick up her son when authorities pulled her over, Pomerleau said. She was transferred to the South Louisiana Ice Processing Centre.

Federal authorities said she entered the US on a B-2 tourist visa that required her to depart by June 6, 1999.

Pomerleau said he did not know what precipitated the arrest but that Ferreira was pulled over while driving. “She was apparently stopped and asked who she was,” he said.

He called it shocking for her to be separated from her family.

“She’s traumatised like many others, but she’s hopeful,” he said.

“She believes in America. She believes in due process, and she’s going to see this case through. She doesn’t really understand why she was arrested. And I’ve been doing this over 20 years and I don’t understand it, either.”

Ferreira, 33, came to the US on a visa with her family at about age 5, Pomerleau said.

Her visa expired, and she obtained a work permit and protection from deportation under an Obama-administration programme called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Pomerleau said she is in the process of applying for a green card that could grant her legal permanent residency.

She lives in Revere, a city outside of Boston, and owns her own small business and clothing line, the lawyer said.

Pomerleau said Ferreira was involved in raising her son, though her relationship with Leavitt ended. He said her sister is a US citizen and her mother is a legal resident.

Ferreira is “following the laws created by Congress to get a green card”, he said.

“We are going to get her due process of law, and this applies to all persons on US soil, not just a select few that the Trump Administration thinks are entitled to a day in court,” he said.

Immigration encounters

Presidents and presidential candidates have had encounters with the US immigration system before.

In 2006 and 2007, the Boston Globe reported that Mitt Romney, who would run in 2008 and 2012, hired a landscaping company that relied on undocumented workers to tend to his lawn in a Boston suburb. He eventually fired the company.

Days before the 2008 election, a federal official disclosed that Zeituni Onyango, then-Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt, was living illegally in Boston public housing. Onyango, who has since died, was granted asylum in 2010.

In 2011, her brother Omar Obama, also from Kenya, was arrested for drink driving in Massachusetts and referred for deportation. He was allowed to apply for a green card.

In 2019, the Trump organisation was found to have had undocumented immigrants on the payroll for years at Trump’s golf clubs and other businesses in New York and New Jersey, leading to a purge of workers.

- Arelis R. Hernandez contributed to this report.