Category World News

A Brazilian-born woman with familial ties to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is being released from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody as she has contested possible deportation, her lawyer has said.

Bruna Ferreira, a longtime resident of Massachusetts, received a $1,500 bond on Monday from an immigration judge at a Louisiana detention centre. Ferreira was arrested by ICE agents last month while driving to pick up her 11-year-old son in New Hampshire. She was previously engaged to Leavitt’s brother, Michael.

Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, said in a text message that “we argued that she wasn’t a danger or a flight risk,” and added: “The government stipulated to our argument and never once argued that she was a criminal illegal alien and waived appeal.”

The White House has sought to distance Leavitt from the case, saying in a statement that Ferreira had not spoken to the press secretary “in years”. Trump administration officials have not provided evidence for their claims about Ferreira’s history.

However, court filings, family photographs, and previous reporting indicate Ferreira lived with her son and shared custody with Michael Leavitt. In an interview with The Washington Post, Ferreira said she had chosen Karoline Leavitt to be her son’s godmother.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said in an email that Ferreira is a “criminal illegal alien” who had been detained for battery, an allegation Pomerleau denies. DHS also stated that Ferreira entered the US on a B2 tourist visa that required her to leave the country in 1999.

“She will have periodic mandatory check-ins with ICE law enforcement to ensure she is abiding by the terms of her release,” the DHS spokesperson added.

A Trump administration official described Ferreira as an absentee parent who “has never lived with her son”. The official said the child has lived full-time with Michael Leavitt in New Hampshire since birth.

Ferreira said the White House’s characterisation of her as someone who had never lived with her child is “disgusting” and untrue.

According to the North Andover Eagle-Tribune, Ferreira and Michael Leavitt were engaged in 2014, when their son Mike Jr was eight months old.

Pomerleau disputes those accounts, insisting his client has shared custody. He said Ferreira came to the US as a toddler and later enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, which grants protection from deportation to people brought to the country without authorisation as children. According to him, the 33-year-old has maintained legal status under DACA and is now seeking a green card.

Efforts by former President Donald Trump to end DACA during his first term were blocked by the US Supreme Court.

The United States government must restore Rumeysa Ozturk’s student visa record, a federal court has ruled, months after the Tufts student was released from immigration detention where she was being held for speaking out against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

United States District Judge Denise Casper delivered an interim ruling on Monday that US President Donald Trump’s administration must restore Ozturk’s name to a database of foreign students administered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), known as SEVIS.

The return of her SEVIS record would allow Ozturk, who is a doctoral student in childhood development and the media at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, to work and participate in research related to her studies, her lawyers said.

In a statement responding to the ruling, Ozturk said her student record was “unlawfully cancelled” because she co-wrote an op-ed advocating “for equal dignity and humanity for all”.

“After eight long months, that record will now finally be restored,” she said.

“Going through this brutality, which began with my unlawful arrest and 45 days of detention at a shameful for-profit ICE prison in Louisiana, I feel more connected to everyone whose educational rights are being denied – especially in Gaza,” Ozturk added, noting that “countless scholars have been murdered and every university has been intentionally destroyed,” in the Palestinian enclave.

Ozturk, who came to the US from Turkiye to study as a Fullbright scholar, was taken into immigration detention on March 25 after her student visa was revoked as part of a wider Trump administration’s crackdown on students who spoke out against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.

Many universities had already begun harshly cracking down on the protests, which included the student encampment at Columbia University in New York, in a bid to repress criticism of the war, which received considerable funding and political support from the US government and companies.

“Here in the US, it is truly sad how much valuable knowledge is currently being lost due to the widespread fear of punishment within the academic community,” Ozturk said in her statement on Monday.

She was one of four Tufts students who co-authored an article published on March 26, 2024 in the Tufts Daily student newspaper, calling on the university to implement student resolutions to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” as well as to “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel”.

The Trump administration said it had revoked her visa because she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation”.

Jessie Rossman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, one of the organisations representing Ozturk, said they were grateful her record would now be reinstated after months of “unlawful, and unfair, treatment”.

“Ms Ozturk came to Massachusetts as a scholar to study childhood development and the media, and we all benefit when she is able to fully participate in her doctoral program,” Rossman said in a statement.

Although many of the students arrested by the Trump administration for pro-Palestinian activism have since been released from detention, several, including former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, have continued to face legal issues related to their immigration status.

Cuba’s top court has sentenced former Economy Minister Alejandro Gil to life in prison for espionage following a closed-door trial, in one of the country’s highest-profile cases in decades.

In a statement on Monday, the Supreme Popular Tribunal said Gil also received a second concurrent prison sentence of 20 years on corruption charges.

These include bribery, falsification of documents and tax evasion.

Gil, who served as economy minister from 2018 to 2024, was once a close confidant of President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

The 61-year-old politician was sacked in February 2024 and had not been seen or heard from until the trials.

The court did not give details about what exactly the former minister did or who he was spying for.

It said Gil had engaged in “corrupt and deceitful actions” and that he had abused the powers of his office “to obtain personal benefits”. It also said he received money from foreign companies and bribed other public officials to legalise the acquisition of assets.

“He failed to follow work procedures with the classified official information he handled, he stole it, damaged it, and finally made it available to the enemy,” it added.

Gil has the right to appeal the sentence within 10 days.

The former minister’s case is the highest profile among officials who have fallen from grace since 2009, when then-Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque were dismissed.

Their case involved leaks of sensitive information, although they were not sentenced.

Gil was the public face of monetary and financial reforms in 2021 in Cuba, including trying to unify the country’s currency system. But Cuba, already affected by an economic crisis and shortage of some products, saw an inflationary spiral.

Honduras’s top prosecutor has issued an international arrest warrant for former President Juan Orlando Hernandez, intensifying legal and political turmoil just days after the ex-leader walked free from a United States prison.

Attorney General Johel Antonio Zelaya announced the move on Monday in a post on X, saying he instructed the Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal, the main investigative body of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and urged Interpol “to execute the international arrest warrant against former President Juan Orlando Hernández”.

Hemos sido lacerados por los tentáculos de la corrupción y por las redes criminales que han marcado profundamente la vida de nuestro país. Es por ello que en el marco del Día Internacional Contra la Corrupción que se conmemora mañana 9 de diciembre, informo al pueblo hondureño… pic.twitter.com/8V4cpyrKq2

Zelaya’s announcement comes as Hernandez was released from a 45-year prison sentence in the US after President Donald Trump pardoned him.

Hernandez’s wife, who insists he is innocent, said he will not return to Honduras immediately due to safety concerns and that he is currently in a “safe place” in the US.

Hernandez was extradited to the US in 2022, where New York prosecutors had accused him of three drug- and weapons-related offences and alleged he used his presidency to transform Honduras into a “narco-state”.

US prosecutors later secured a conviction, saying Hernandez played a central role in moving cocaine through Honduras and onward to the United States. He was handed a 45-year prison sentence on the back of “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world”, according to prosecutors.

At the same time, Hernandez has been at the centre of investigations in his country that have targeted current and former politicians suspected of diverting public money. In 2023, along with several former officials, he was charged with involvement in the alleged misappropriation of more than $12m in state funds for his political campaign.

Trump’s decision to pardon Hernandez came as he urged Hondurans to rally behind presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, a member of Hernandez’s right-wing National Party, in the country’s November 30 presidential election.

“I will be granting a Full and Complete Pardon to Former President Juan Orlando Hernandez who has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly”, Trump wrote in a social media post last week.

With 97 percent of ballots counted, Asfura held 40.52 percent of the vote, remaining ahead of centrist rival Salvador Nasralla by roughly 42,100 votes.

The tally had already been halted temporarily on Friday with 88 percent of ballots processed. According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), about 16 percent of tally sheets contained irregularities requiring further review, an issue it attributed to the company managing the vote-counting system.