CONCORD, N.H.: A Massachusetts woman who was once engaged to the brother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt remains in ICE custody two weeks after being arrested on her way to pick up the son she shares with her former fiance.
Bruna Ferreira, 33, was driving to her son’s school in New Hampshire on Nov. 12 when she was pulled over in Revere, Massachusetts, her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said Wednesday.
“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” he said. “She was bounced from Massachusetts, to New Hampshire, to Vermont, to Louisiana on this unconstitutional merry-go-round.”
Pomerleau said Ferreira’s 11-year-old son lives with her former fiance, Michael Leavitt, in New Hampshire, but they have shared custody and maintained a co-parenting relationship for many years since their engagement broke off. He said the boy lived with both parents at one point and later split his time between them, spending numerous nights and weekends with his mother.
“She was detained for no reason at all. She’s not dangerous. She’s not a flight risk. She’s not a criminal illegal alien,” he said. “She’s a business owner who pays taxes and has a child who was wondering where mommy was after school two weeks ago.”
Michael Leavitt did not respond to a message sent to his workplace. The White House press secretary declined comment. Karoline Leavitt grew up in New Hampshire, and made an unsuccessful run for Congress from the state in 2022 before becoming Trump’s spokesperson for his 2024 campaign and later joining him at the White House.
Pomerleau said his client was 2 or 3 when she and her family came to the US from Brazil, and she later enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama-era policy that shields immigrants who were brought to the US as children. He said she was in the process of applying for a green card.
The Department of Homeland Security said Ferreira entered the US on a tourist visa that required her to leave in 1999. A department spokesperson said Ferreira had a previous arrest for battery, an allegation her attorney denied.
An online search of court cases in several Massachusetts locations where she has lived found no record of such a charge. In New Hampshire, court records show, she had two motor vehicle violations in 2020: speeding and driving an unregistered vehicle. The charges were placed on file without a finding on the condition that she enroll in a safe driving course and remain on good behavior for one year.
“They’re claiming she has some type of criminal record we’ve seen nowhere. Show us the proof,” Pomerleau said. “She would’ve been deported years ago if that was true. And yet, here she is in the middle of this immigration imbroglio.”
A DHS spokesperson confirmed Ferreira is being held in Louisiana.
President Donald Trump’s efforts to broadly reshape immigration policy have included changing the approach to DACA recipients. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin recently issued a statement saying that people “who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations. DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country.”
Immigrant with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is detained by ICE
https://arab.news/n5tk6
Immigrant with family ties to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is detained by ICE
- The Department of Homeland Security said Ferreira entered the US on a tourist visa that required her to leave in 1999
Zuckerberg says Meta no longer designs apps to maximize screentime
- Meta Platforms CEO faces questioned at a landmark trial over youth social media addiction
- It was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users
LOS ANGELES: Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back in court on Wednesday against a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of its social media platforms, as a landmark trial over youth social media addiction continues.
Zuckerberg was questioned on his statements to Congress in 2024, at a hearing where he said the company did not give its teams the goal of maximizing time spent on its apps.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health when she was a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase time spent on the app by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the amount of time users spent on the app, it has since changed its approach.
“If you are trying to say my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said.
The appearance was the billionaire Facebook founder’s first time testifying in court on Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.
While Zuckerberg has previously testified on the subject before Congress, the stakes are higher at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could erode Big Tech’s longstanding legal defense against claims of user harm.
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children’s mental health.
Australia has prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries including Spain are considering similar curbs. In the US, Florida has prohibited companies from allowing users under age 14. Tech industry trade groups are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube as a child. She alleges the companies sought to profit by hooking kids on their services despite knowing social media could harm their mental health. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and is seeking to hold the companies liable.
Meta and Google have denied the allegations, and pointed to their work to add features that keep users safe. Meta has often pointed to a National Academies of Sciences finding that research does not show social media changes kids’ mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits in the US accusing the companies of fueling a youth mental health crisis. Over the years, investigative reporting has unearthed internal Meta documents showing the company was aware of potential harm.
Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study showing no link between parental supervision and teens’ attentiveness to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document shown at trial.
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at the trial that the woman’s health records show her issues stem from a troubled childhood, and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
