US immigration authorities are detaining the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, officials said on Wednesday, a sign of the wide reach of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
A US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement that immigration authorities had arrested the woman, Brazilian national Bruna Caroline Ferreira, but declined to provide the exact circumstances.<\/p>\n
News reports said Ms Ferreira had been taken into custody in Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston.<\/p>\n
DHS said Ms Ferreira had entered the US on a tourist visa and failed to depart, but a GoFundMe page organised by her sister said she had legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.<\/p>\n
Most arrested by ICE had no convictions<\/p>\n
Mr Trump, a Republican, has surged immigration officers to major cities across the US in an effort to reach historic levels of deportations, sweeping in many long-term residents and non-criminals.<\/p>\n
More than two-thirds of the roughly 53,000 people arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained as of November 15th had no criminal convictions, according to ICE statistics.<\/p>\n
DHS said Ms Ferreira had a previous arrest for battery, but did not provide further details. Reuters could not independently confirm the alleged charge.<\/p>\n
In response to a request for comment to the White House, a source familiar with the matter confirmed that Ms Ferreira was the mother to Ms Leavitt’s nephew. The source said the nephew had lived full-time with Ms Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt, in New Hampshire since birth and had never resided with Ms Ferreira.<\/p>\n
ICE detention centre<\/p>\n
DHS said Ms Ferreira was currently being held in an ICE detention centre in Louisiana.<\/p>\n
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, all individuals unlawfully present in the United States are subject to deportation,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The GoFundMe page, organised by Ms Ferreira’s sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, aims to raise $30,000 for her legal expenses, describing her as a selfless and hardworking mother.<\/p>\n
“She has done everything in her power to build a stable, honest life here,” the page said. “She has maintained her legal status through DACA, followed every requirement, and has always strived to do the right thing.”<\/p>\n
Her detention has been “especially painful” for her 11-year-old son, “who needs his mother and hopes every single day that she\u2019ll be home in time for the holidays,” the page said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US immigration authorities are detaining the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, officials said on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-161683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}