A mother was taken into custody by ICE. Then the public learned of her family tie to the White House

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images via CNN Newsource

(CNN) — Bruna Ferreira came to the US from Brazil as a child, and by all accounts, lived a life like any American: playing on the high school tennis team, getting married and divorced, building a small business and helping raise her son.

When she was taken into custody by ICE agents earlier this month as she left her home in a Boston suburb to pick up her son from school, it didn’t make headlines: she was another immigrant caught up in President Donald Trump’s deportation crackdown, despite having developed strong American roots.

But during her arrest, Ferreira repeatedly told authorities that her son’s aunt was the White House press secretary, her sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, told the Boston Globe . Her former fiancé – the fathe