AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to two shocking immigration cases, among many. In a minute, we’ll look at what happened to a 19-year-old Babson College freshman, arrested at the Boston airport and deported to Honduras last month when she was flying — hoping to fly in a surprise visit to her family in Texas for Thanksgiving.

But first, we turn to the case of Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the mother of the 11-year-old nephew of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Ferreira shares a child with Leavitt’s brother, Michael Leavitt. She’s a Brazilian immigrant who arrived to the U.S. when she was 6 years old. New video of her arrest has just been obtained and released by TMZ. She was stopped on November 12th. She had picked her — had left her son off at school. On Tuesday, Bruna Ferreira was released from detention in Louisiana on a $1,500 bond. The Trump administration has characterized her as a “criminal illegal alien” from Brazil, a characterization Bruna refutes and has called “disgusting.”

For more, we’re joined by her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, in Norwell, Massachusetts.

Thanks so much for being with us, Todd. Explain what happened in court yesterday. Tell us Bruna’s story, why she was detained, and now the government did not challenge her release.

TODD POMERLEAU: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. And it’s a real privilege to come here today and discuss yet another abuse of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s cruel immigration policies.

Bruna Ferreira is a mother of Michael Jr., an 11-year-old. And she was surreptitiously arrested, and the government was trying to deport a person who’s been trying to get a green card since the age of 18 years old. And they have falsely claimed that she is a, quote-unquote, “criminal illegal alien,” which they claim about all of the clients we’ve had that have been unlawfully arrested and detained. She had a bond hearing at 10 a.m. Monday in the immigration court in Oakdale, Louisiana, 1,500 miles away from her home, away from her child, away from her business.

And during the argument, Jason Thomas, former DHS counsel — he’s a managing attorney with our office in Boston — he basically laid out chapter and verse why that was a bald and wrong characterization of Bruna Ferreira. She has zero criminal record. She’s been trying to get a green card since the age of 18. They said she illegally entered the country, yet she came here at the age of 6 on a tourist visa, which is a lawful entry. Her grandmother brought her here. When her grandmother was going to bring her back home, her grandmother passed away unexpectedly in Brazil, so she had no way back. They expect a 6-year-old child, apparently, to pack her bags and buy a plane ticket and fly back to Brazil.

And then, on top of that, they’ve been falsely claiming she was arrested. She’s never been arrested in her life, except for the rogue, unlawful arrest that occurred on November the 12th. We talked about how she never was convicted or even accused of a crime. This is a juvenile offense when she was 16 years old. It’s subject to privacy laws under Massachusetts. Her and another girl in high school were seen pushing each other in the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts, where they were arguing over who was entitled to the $8 of change from a purchase. And a police officer just happened to be driving by, and he told them each to go to the juvenile court, where they were summonsed, not arrested, not for a crime, and the case was promptly dismissed.

So they’ve been engaging in character assassination against her. When we made all of these arguments, when DHS had its turn, its lawyer said two words: “I stipulate.” That means it agreed factually and legally to every single argument we made. The judge set the minimum bond available, $1,500, which is what we asked for. And the government then said it waived appeal.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you — I mean, this is the mother of the nephew of Karoline Leavitt, the White House press spokesperson. What has she said about this? Bruna was involved for years and had the baby with Michael, Karoline Leavitt’s brother. She also suggested: Why would they even know where she was driving? The only people who knew, because she was driving her kid to and from school, Michael Jr., was Michael, Karoline’s brother. What is going on here? And what has Karoline Leavitt said, the White House press spokesperson, who so often reiterates Trump’s anti-immigrant policies?

TODD POMERLEAU: For somebody who has a lot of rhetoric and a lot to say about noncitizens throughout the United States, she hasn’t said anything about this case. The DHS press secretary is the one that keeps falsely claiming, libelously and slanderously, by the way, that Bruna is a “criminal illegal alien,” keeps regurgitating that she was arrested for a crime, which is factually and legally false. And then, even after its own lawyer agreed that that was — that it stipulated that that wasn’t true, it still continues with that character assassination.

Karoline Leavitt would have been my client’s sister-in-law, had she married Michael Sr. They were madly in love when they were young. They were engaged to be married. They had a child. And like a lot of relationships in the world, it broke up. She’s never harbored any animosity toward the Leavitt family. She has spoken very kindly of Karoline. She even picked Karoline to be the mother-in-law — I mean, to be the godmother, excuse me, for Michael Jr., over her own sister. She has one sister, and she chose Karoline Leavitt to be the godmother. And that’s a significant thing for Catholics in America to do.

And she’s just dumbfounded. She was sitting in a for-profit prison in Louisiana. This is a single mother who owns two businesses. She actually looked up to Karoline, because Karoline is a woman who rose to a position of power. She ran for Congress at a young age. She’s now the press secretary, which is an envious position for anyone to be in. And she’s always looked kindly upon her. But Karoline was a high schooler when she was dating Michael. Karoline is six or seven years younger than Bruna. Bruna is 32 years old.

So, she’s just absolutely astounded, the way she’s been labeled. I mean, if she’s a “criminal illegal alien” now, which they keep calling her, she was a criminal illegal alien then, when she was dating Michael, when she was engaged to him, and when she was at a baseball game with Michael Jr., where Karoline was, a couple springtimes ago. So, all of a sudden, now the Leavitts have a problem with criminal illegal aliens, yet one of them was about to marry one of their loved ones, and there was no problem then.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, now she’s out. She was sent to Louisiana. She was jailed. What happens next?

TODD POMERLEAU: It was even worse than that. She was arrested in her driveway. They knew exactly where she was going to be. She was driving a car not registered to her. Five federal agents with masks over their faces just barricaded her in her driveway when she was pulling out onto the street to go pick up her son 33 miles away from her house, like she did four or five days a week. And they never showed her a warrant. At first, they asked her for her license, and she thought it was odd, because it didn’t appear to be a traffic stop. She’s not clueless. She watches the news, and ICE wears masks all over their faces, because they don’t want to, apparently, show the public who they are. And then she was asked if she was Bruna. And she was puzzled, and she said, “Why are you asking me my name?” And then they arrested her. And she demanded to see a warrant, and then never saw one. TMZ leaked the video, that I had never seen, about a week ago, and it shows a brazen, unconstitutional arrest, a clear violation of her rights.

And it’s just really uncalled for. At first, we thought it was happenstance, because it wouldn’t surprise me if ICE would actually arrest Melania Trump. They just go around and arrest everybody these days, with apparently no recourse, according to their own policies. But again, we’re in courtrooms. The first chance we had, she was released on $1,500 bail. Bruna is a fighter. She’s a strong, courageous woman. And she had one of her days in court, and she’ll have many more in the future, where we expect her to get her lawful permanent residency. There is no reason under the law for even arresting her. She wasn’t dangerous. She wasn’t a risk of flight, according to the government’s own lawyer. And that’s the standard that was required to actually arrest her again, when she’s in the middle of a green card process.