A Brazilian model has alleged she was detained and deported from the United States after a request linked to a close associate of US President Donald Trump. The model claimed the whole thing was a conspiracy by her ex to win the custody dispute over their teenage son.41-year-old Amanda Ungaro said her former partner Paolo Zampolli, a long-time friend of Trump and a White House envoy, used his powerful influence to have her placed in immigration detention and ultimately deported to Brazil.“It was not enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of relationship: he wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life, when I got married,” Ungaro told Spanish newspaper ‘El País’ from her home in Rio de Janeiro.The claims come from events in June 2025, when Ungaro was arrested in Miami along with her current husband, a Brazilian doctor, over alleged fraud linked to a cosmetic clinic. She has denied wrongdoing and said she had no prior criminal record. According to her, around ten officers “stormed” their home before taking them into custody.At the time of her arrest, Ungaro’s most recent US visa had expired in 2019, leaving her without legal immigration status.
According to reporting by The New York Times, Zampolli contacted a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official to ask whether she could be transferred into ICE custody. During that call, the case was described as important to “someone close to the White House.”Ungaro alleges that her former partner used her immigration status as leverage in their ongoing custody battle over their 16-year-old son.
She said she was later handcuffed and moved to an immigration detention centre in Miami, where she spent “the whole day crying.”Her account of detention describes harsh conditions. She said she was held alongside violent offenders, including “child murderers”, and witnessed scenes such as an elderly detainee restrained to a wheelchair and a woman who miscarried while waiting for medical care. Ungaro also claimed that several detainees had legal residency status.After more than three months in custody, she was transferred to Louisiana before being deported to Brazil. “It was a hall with more than 120 people, the floor was wet, there were no windows, four days without seeing the sun… I came out infested with lice,” she said.Ungaro said she returned to Brazil with nothing but her prison uniform. She had left Brazil at the age of 13 to pursue a modelling career in the United States.Zampolli outright denied the allegations, saying he did not request any special treatment.
“My relationship with the biological mother of my son was very difficult. I stick around for my son because in Italy, normally you have a father and a mother,” he told the Daily Beast. He has said he only sought information about the legal process.The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also rejected claims of political interference, stating that Ungaro’s detention and deportation were due to her expired visa and the fraud charges.
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Zampolli introduced Melania Trump to Trump in the 1990s and has long moved in the president’s circle for a long time. He also addressed past claims about how he introduced them, saying, “I said: ‘Melania meet Donald, Donald meet Melania,’ and then I left the table because I had 300 guests.”A spokesperson for Melania Trump said she “has no knowledge of, nor involvement in, the personal affairs of Mr. Zampoli and Ms. Ungaro,” and confirmed she has no contact with ICE.Zampolli’s name has also appeared in documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein, though he has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the late pedophile.
