Ex-girlfriend of Trump ally speaks out after ICE deports her to Brazil: ‘It’s not enough for him…’

A Brazilian model claims she was detained and deported from the United States after a close aide to US President Donald Trump made the request. The model claimed the whole thing was a plot by her ex-husband to win a custody dispute over their teenage son.Amanda Ungaro, 41, said her former partner, White House envoy Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump friend, used Trump’s powerful influence to place her in immigration detention and eventually deported to Brazil.“It was not enough that he destroyed me during the 20-year relationship: when I started a new life, when I got married, he wanted to destroy me again,” Ungaro told Spanish newspaper El País at his home in Rio de Janeiro.The charges stem from an incident in June 2025, when Ungaro and her now-Brazilian doctor husband were arrested in Miami on suspicion of fraud related to a beauty clinic. She denies wrongdoing and says she has no criminal record. According to her, about ten police officers “stormed” their home and took them into custody.At the time of her arrest, Ungaro’s most recent U.S. visa had expired in 2019, so she had no legal immigration status. According to the New York Times, Zampoli contacted a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official to ask if she could be transferred to ICE custody. During that call, the case was described as important to “people close to the White House.”Ungaro claims her ex-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 transferred to an immigration detention center in Miami, where she “cryed all day.”Her account of detention described harsh conditions. She said she was housed with violent offenders including “child murderers” and witnessed scenes such as an elderly detainee confined to a wheelchair and a woman having a miscarriage while waiting for medical treatment. Ungaro also claimed that several of the detainees had legal residency status.After more than three months in detention, she was transferred to Louisiana and then deported to Brazil. “It was a hall with over 120 people, the floor was wet, there were no windows, no sunlight for four days… I came out covered in lice,” she said.Ungaro said she returned to Brazil with nothing but her prison uniform. She left Brazil at the age of 13 to pursue a modeling career in the United States.Zampoli categorically denied the accusations, saying he did not ask for any special treatment. “I have a very difficult relationship with my son’s biological mother. I will always be there for my son because in Italy usually you have a father and a mother,” he told The Daily Beast. He said he was simply seeking information about the legal proceedings.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also dismissed accusations of political interference, saying Ungaro was detained and deported because of her visa expiration and fraud charges.

Zampoli introduced Melania Trump to Trump in the 1990s and has been in the president’s circle for a long time. He also addressed past claims about how he introduced them, saying: “I said, ‘Melania met Donald, Donald met Melania,’ and I walked away from the table because I had 300 guests.”A spokesperson for Melania Trump said she had “no knowledge of or involvement in the personal affairs of Mr. Zampoli and Ms. Ungaro” and confirmed she had no contact with ICE.Zampoli’s name also appears in documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing with the late pedophile.