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By Joshua Scheer
It hits different when it’s your family. In this case, the mother of the nephew of White House press secretary overstayed her visa 26 years ago. Her name is Bruna Caroline Ferreira — she is the mother of Karoline Leavitt’s nephew.
According to reporting by WMUR New Hampshire, where her son lives with his father, her lawyer Todd Pomerleau insists she came to the U.S. legally under DACA and is in the process of getting her green card. “Bruna has no criminal record whatsoever. I don’t know where that is coming from. Show us the proof. There’s no charges out there. She’s not a criminal, illegal alien — we’re hearing that said about anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen,” Pomerleau said.
As the Cato Institute has reported yesterday most people arrested by this administration are not criminals — with 5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions.
Something worth watching is trying to figure out who might have called this in, because it seems like some of Leavitt’s family knew of her status. According to reporting in The Boston Globe, her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues who was quoted as saying, “They just kept saying, ‘Tell her to self-deport,’” She added, “Self-deport to where? Brazil is not her home.”
The question is worth repeating: if people have continually told you to “self-deport,” how long until they start the process for you?
Also from the Globe during her arrest, Ferreira repeatedly told authorities that her son’s aunt was the White House press secretary, her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues
“I’m sure she tried to just use whatever she could come up with in the moment,” Dos Santos Rodrigues told the Globe. “However, it didn’t really help very much.”
How ironic that on a day when we celebrate the immigration of white immigrants from England and their supposed “friendship” with Native people, we continue to blame, judge, and persecute immigrants. This is not a new issue — the militarization of the border has been a problem since Bill Clinton, and Obama still has deported more people than Trump. We also have to contend with the fact that non-white immigrants have been treated far harsher than their white counterparts. Certainly, with the courts striking down due process and skin color becoming a tool for police to use, it’s hard not to avoid saying that out loud.
We are a country of immigrants, and immigrants MAKE AMERICA GREAT. In 2025, the pro-immigrant think tank American Immigration Council studied and found that more than 46 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Immigrants add to our tax base — often without receiving many services — and because of that, more wealth is generated into our coffers so we can send more money to Ukraine, Israel, and Argentina. We can spend 1 trillion dollars on the Pentagon but can’t come up with 32 billion for healthcare because undocumented people might use it. This, when many immigrants — both documented and undocumented — have served with distinction, and we still deport them and their families.
As we celebrate the original white immigrants who arrived in this country fleeing persecution, we should remember what today’s immigrants bring to this country. Most people being detained now are not criminals — overstaying a visa is not a criminal offense; it’s a civil infraction.
More to come, and have a happy Thanksgiving.
Here is a Thanksgiving message from my friend Jose Antonio Vargas.
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