An immigration judge ordered the release of a Brazilian woman with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Bruna Ferreira, who is the mother of Leavitt's 11-year-old nephew, was being held at an immigrant detention facility in Louisiana after federal officers arrested her last month in Massachusetts, but immigration Judge Cynthia Goodman ordered her to be set free on the lowest bond possible, her lawyers told the Washington Post.
Her lawyer Jason Thomas told the judge that Ferreira, who had previously been engaged to Leavitt's brother Michael, that the U.S. government had mischaracterized the 33-year-old as a “criminal illegal alien” with a previous arrest for battery.
Public records show the longtime Massachusetts resident, who came to the U.S. as a 6-year-old child, had no criminal record, and a lawyer representing the Department of Homeland Security agreed Ferreira did not pose a risk to society and did not object to her release.
The White House previously issued a statement stating that Leavitt and Ferreira had not spoken in years, but Ferreira said she had chosen Leavitt to be her child’s godmother.
Ferreira had repeatedly tried to obtain legal residency, but she was granted work permits and reprieves from deportation under an Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.