It sure looks like Karoline Leavitt had something to do with the ICE arrest and detention of Bruna-Caroline Ferreira, the Brazilian-born DACA recipient who is the mother of a child with the Trump press secretary’s brother. Leavitt is also the child’s godmother.
Ferreira sat down for a lengthy, emotional interview on CNN Friday night. She was accompanied by her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau. Despite Trump administration claims that she had a criminal record and that her son lived full-time with his father, Ferreira seemed every bit the law-abiding, involved mother of her child, Michael.
According to Ferreira and her lawyer, she was arrested by a “swarm” of masked agents from five unmarked vehicles, and never shown a warrant, as she left her home to pick up Michael from school. They were obviously looking for her because they asked her, “Are you Bruna?” Pomerleau described a video of the arrest as looking like “an undercover drug buy, where they just go in right away and they know who they're getting.”
Then there was this exchange in which Ferreira and her lawyer suggested she had been targeted by the Trump administration:
POMERLEAU: And what was strange about it is hardly any people knew where she lived. She was driving a vehicle not registered to her. It seemed like they knew exactly where she was going to be, which was customary. She regularly picked her son up. She'd leave around the same time, multiple days a week. They knew exactly where she was going to be.
BURNETT: So, it sounds like you're saying you were targeted. … And because of who she is, because of the relationship to the press secretary.
POMERLEAU: It seems to be. And what's bizarre about her case, anyway, she's been trying to get a green card literally since she was almost six years old, and she was in the process of doing that. And literally one day after she filed her most recent green card application, the Trump administration tried to accelerate deportation case by starting it up again.
Ferreira went on to tell her heartbreaking and terrifying story of arrest and detention and how she and her mother, who brought Ferreira to the U.S. as a six-year-old, had been otherwise law-abiding residents. “I don't even have a parking ticket. And I’m so proud of it,” Ferreira said.
At the very least, Leavitt seems to have helped the administration smear Ferreira by perpetuating the apparently false claim that Ferreira never lived with her son. “Why, why, why, why lie?” Ferreira asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Ferreira was asked what she would like to say to Leavitt.
“I think what I would have to say to Karoline is just because you went to a Catholic school doesn't make you a good Catholic,” Ferreira responded. “You know, you're a mother. You are a mother now. And you should know. How would you feel if you were in those -- in my shoes, you know? How would you feel if somebody did this to you?”


