Donald Trump likes to say his administration is deporting “the worst of the worst,” but that description might better apply to the people who abuse political connections to send people to ICE camps in revenge for petty slights or child custody disputes.
There’s the case of ICE rounding up the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew against whom her brother was seeking revenge. Then there’s the state trooper who had his 85-year-old stepmother rounded up by ICE so he could grab his father’s inheritance. And now there is the case of a guy with connections to Donald and Melania Trump who used ICE to arrest the mother of his son.
The New York Times reports:
Last June, the man credited with introducing President Trump to his wife asked the administration for a favor.
Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent turned presidential special envoy, had learned that his Brazilian ex-girlfriend was in a Miami jail, arrested on charges of fraud at her workplace. They had been in a custody battle over their teenage son. Now he saw an opportunity.
He reached out to a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, explaining that his ex was in the country illegally, according to records obtained by The New York Times and a person familiar with the communications. Could she be put in ICE detention? That could help him get his son back.
The official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up the woman from the jail before she was released on bail, according to the records and a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it. During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House. …
The ICE official’s willingness to spring into action for a Trump ally—even one in a low-level, largely ceremonial role—reflects a recurring theme of the second Trump administration: The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.
Combine this with pardons issued to Trump’s cronies (and many more promised for the future), and this is the birth of an American aristocracy. Those who have connections enjoy impunity from the law—but they can summon its full force against anyone who crosses them.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
 | A guest post by
|