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Relative of sneering White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt snatched by ICE

Karoline Leavitt is best known as Donald Trump’s press secretary, slapping down journalists from the White House podium and twisting the truth for the far-right president’s regime. Leavitt has often defended the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency which effectively serves as Trump’s private militia.

But now one of her relatives is the one in ICE custody. On 26 November, CNN reported:

Bruna Caroline Ferreira, a Brazil native and the mother of Leavitt’s nephew, was arrested near Boston on November 12, her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told CNN.

A Homeland Security official told CNN:

Ferreira was in the US illegally after overstaying a tourist visa that required her to leave the country in June 1999. Ferreira “has a previous arrest for battery” and is currently in removal proceedings.

Among the X rumours going around, one was that Leavitt dobbed her sister-in-law in herself:

Ferreira had previously been on a form of visa called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). That had protected her from deportation because she had had come to the US as a child.

Trump ended the scheme in his first presidential term. A US official simply told the press:

Karoline had no involvement whatsoever in this matter.

ICE’s bloody swathe across America

Leavitt has not commented publicly. It is understood her brother and Ferreira are not together. One reporter said Leavitt herself has not been in contact with Ferreira for years:

One X user wondered whether Leavitt would try and exercise her power to help Ferreira:

Border Patrol have become a vital part of Trump’s racist war on immigration. They have a quota of 3,000 arrests a week. Twenty people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to power in January. The latest, Chinese national Chaofeng Ge, was found hanged in a shower in US deportation processing centre in what is known as the ‘hogtie’ position – hands tied behind the body and attached to his feet.

And the horrors won’t stop. This week it was reported a victim of torture was deported by ICE and ended up back in the country she fled from thirty years ago:

Leavitt’s energetic defence of Trumpism isn’t likely to wane. She’s a true believer who’s made an art form out of defending a wicked and deranged programme. When you start exercising sweeping policies based in a fascist logic, you’re eventually going to get caught out by them yourself. That said, the worst Leavitt will get is some bad press. For ICE’s victims, it’s a matter of life and death.

Featured image via the Canary

By Joe Glenton

This post was originally published on Canary.