A Brazilian model has alleged that she was detained and deported from the United States following a request involving a close aide of US President Donald Trump. The model claimed that the entire affair was a conspiracy hatched by her ex to win the custody dispute of their teenage son.Amanda Ungaro, 41, said her former partner Paolo Zampolli, Trump’s longtime friend and White House envoy, used his powerful influence to get her placed in immigration detention and ultimately deported to Brazil.“It was not enough for him to destroy me during a 20-year relationship: when I started a new life, when I got married, he wanted to destroy me again,” Ungaro told Spanish newspaper ‘El Pais’ from her home in Rio de Janeiro.These claims come from events in June 2025, when Ungaro was arrested along with her current husband, a Brazilian doctor, for alleged fraud involving a cosmetic clinic in Miami. He has denied wrongdoing and says he has no prior criminal record. According to him, about ten officers “attacked” his home before he was taken 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 The New York Times report, Zampoli contacted a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official asking if he could be transferred to ICE custody. During that call, the matter was described as important to “someone close to the White House”.Ungaro alleges that her former partner used her immigration status in an ongoing custody battle over their 16-year-old son. She said she was later handcuffed and taken to an immigration detention center in Miami, where she “spent the whole day crying.”The story of his detention describes harsh conditions. She said she was housed with violent criminals, including “child murderers”, and that she witnessed scenes such as an elderly detainee sitting in a wheelchair and a woman having an abortion while waiting for medical care. Ungaro also claimed that many of the detainees had legal residence status.After more than three months in custody, he was transferred to Louisiana before being deported to Brazil. “It was a hall with more than 120 people, the floor was wet, no windows, didn’t see the sun for four days… I came out infected with 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.Zampolli rejected the allegations and said he did not request any special treatment. “My relationship with my son’s biological mother was very difficult. I stand up for my son because in Italy, normally you have a father and a mother,” he told The Daily Beast. He has said that he had only asked for 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 his expired visa and fraud charges.
Zampolli introduced Melania Trump to Trump in the 1990s and was in the president’s circle for a long time. He also addressed previous claims about how he introduced them, “I said: ‘Melania meet Donald, Donald meet Melania,’ and then I walked off the table because I had 300 guests.”A spokesperson for Melania Trump said she had “no knowledge of, nor any involvement in, the individual cases of Mr. Zampolli and Ms. Ungaro,” and confirmed that she has had no contact with ICE.Zampoli’s name has also surfaced in documents linked to Jeffrey Epstein, although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the late pedophile.