This is the article about the woman who reportedly would have driven Melania to do her preemptive presser.

Archive (Spanish): https://web.archive.org/web/20260412063315/https://elpais.com/america/2026-04-12/amanda-ungaro-de-compartir-veladas-con-los-trump-a-ser-deportada-por-el-ice.html

English translation below

After spending practically half her life in the United States, 41-year-old Brazilian Amanda Ungaro was expelled from the country last October. She had endured three hellish months in a detention center before being deported — as have more than 600,000 immigrants since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 and breathlessly announced “the largest deportation in history.” What makes the case of this former model who worked at the UN remarkable is that, through her ex-partner and father of her son, businessman Paolo Zampolli, Ungaro had in the past shared evenings with the Trumps at the family mansion in Mar-a-Lago, including the party to ring in 2022, which she now recalls as one of those “incredibly boring six-hour events.”

Both couples shared other New Year’s Eves, a children’s Easter party at the White House, a Fourth of July celebration… All promptly documented on Instagram by Zampolli, the man who introduced Melania to Trump and was appointed special envoy for global alliances by his friend. The Brazilian and the Italian-American, who split in 2023 after two decades together, are locked in a bitter custody battle over their son, G., age 16.

“Now it’s war. We’ll see who wins. I kept quiet for years and that’s why people judge me. ‘Why are you speaking up now?’ they say. Because the guy wouldn’t let me live in peace! I tried. I left the relationship with nothing, enrolled my son in a boarding school, and went to work,” Ungaro says last Tuesday in an interview at her new home, a penthouse in Rio de Janeiro. “It wasn’t enough for him to destroy me during 20 years of a relationship — he wanted to destroy me again when I started a new life, when I got married.”

Paolo Zampolli, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and Amanda Ungaro, in an image shared by Zampolli to celebrate July 4, 2020. — Paolo Zampolli’s IG

Ungaro left New York and Washington behind. Already settled in Aventura, Florida, with her husband, everything blew up last June. “Ten police officers burst into the house, arrested me, and took my son to the station,” she recounts. She and her husband, a Brazilian doctor, were arrested and charged with fraud at an aesthetic clinic following anonymous complaints. Ungaro rejects the accusations and emphasizes that her expulsion from the U.S. prevented her from mounting a defense. She insists that “the truth will come to light.” They put her in a cell “with child murderers!” “Me — someone with no criminal record. I was terrified,” she recalls.

When Zampolli learned his ex-girlfriend was in custody, he contacted a senior official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ensure she remained jailed and was deported, so he could obtain the long-sought custody of their child, according to The New York Times. ICE complied with his wishes. Zampolli, reached by phone by EL PAÍS, denies any wrongdoing.

Deportation

Shackled hand and foot, the woman was transferred to an immigration detention center in Miami. Three and a half months of horror began. Her husband, who held a green card (permanent residency permit), was released. “I volunteered to mop the floor at six in the morning so I wouldn’t lose my mind. I spent my days crying. I read the Bible from cover to cover,” she says. She helped others, sharing her phone credit with them. She claims there were detainees who held residency permits, an octogenarian shackled in a wheelchair, a girl who had just lost a baby and was slow to receive medical attention…

For the deportation to proceed, she was taken to Louisiana. “That place was a ward with more than 120 people, a wet floor, no windows, four days without seeing the sun… I came out infested with lice,” she recounts. She landed in Brazil wearing a prison uniform, with nothing — not even a cell phone. “I spent a month depressed in a room.” Ungaro regrets not having left Zampolli sooner. And not having reported him. “I was living at the mercy of a sick psychopath who abused me psychologically, sexually, and physically. I asked many people for help. No one ever helped me. But I couldn’t leave without my son, and he wouldn’t sign [the authorization].” Zampolli denies the accusations: “I made her an ambassador [alternate], we were invited to the White House… What kind of abuse is that? We had a soap-opera relationship, very toxic,” he says.

Ungaro poses in her apartment in Rio de Janeiro. — Leonardo Carrato Ungaro had left her hometown, Londrina, Brazil, at age 13 to become a model. The trips kept coming: São Paulo, Italy, Germany, Japan, South Korea… At first her mother accompanied her, but she soon became independent and set her sights on making it in New York.

Flight with Epstein

In 2002, when she was not yet 17, she flew from Paris to New York on the Lolita Express, the private plane of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “My agent told me: ‘We’re going with a couple of friends, a private plane just for us.’ There were about 30 very young women, 14, 15, 16 years old. I said: ‘What is this?’ And he replied: ‘Don’t worry.’” That’s how she remembers a trip first reported by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo.

Ungaro says she didn’t interact with anyone on that flight, aside from greeting the hosts, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his accomplice, who is serving a sentence for sex trafficking. “Amanda, let me introduce you to Jeffrey,” her agent said. “He came over and asked: ‘Where are you from? How old are you? Which modeling agency do you work with?’ And he introduced me to Ghislaine.” She says she never crossed paths with Epstein again; he was found dead in his cell in 2019. The same fate befell the modeling agent who brought Ungaro onto that plane, Jean-Luc Brunel, who was arrested in connection with the Epstein case and died in a Paris prison in 2022.

In New York, the Brazilian continued her career and met Zampolli, who owned a modeling agency.

United Nations

When she became a mother in 2010, she left the fashion world. The businessman secured her a position at the United Nations, where for several years she served as a diplomat for the island of Grenada, while he represented another small Caribbean island: Dominica. That’s where their ambassador titles come from. Two tiny countries, each with barely 100,000 inhabitants, that each hold one vote at the UN — the same as China.

“At first, I didn’t understand anything. But I started making contacts, building a professional network. And I did very well,” she recalls. She appears in UN documents as Grenada’s representative at sessions on the International Criminal Court and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

She exchanged her modeling visa for a diplomatic passport with tax exemptions. At the time, Zampolli preferred that his then-girlfriend keep that status because it was more fiscally advantageous, according to an apparent out-of-court agreement to which this newspaper has had access. “Paolo used to tell me: ‘Wait for Trump to win the election [a second time], and we’ll sort out your papers and he’ll get you an American passport,’” she says.

After several years with an expired residency permit, Ungaro was processing a visa tied to her husband, the doctor, when she was arrested. He remains in Florida, trying to reach a legal settlement. Brazilian Ungaro, the Trumps, and Zampolli — now a presidential envoy — along with the son over whose custody they are fighting, in an image taken at the White House and shared by Zampolli in 2019. — Paolo Zampolli’s IG

Zampolli, well known for decades in New York nightlife, was the owner of ID Models. And in that world, he occasionally crossed paths with Epstein. His name appears a handful of times — in press clippings and an email he sent to the sex offender through a third party containing a link to a luxury magazine — among the millions of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice. Zampolli told The New York Times they were not close.

The sun is setting over Rio de Janeiro as Ungaro finishes recounting her story, with its countless twists across the legal cases she’s dealing with, including the fierce custody battle over her teenage son. While she holds endless meetings with her lawyers, she dreams of reuniting with him and with her husband. It’s time for photos. She puts on a jacket, slips on some heels, and poses with a serious expression.

By Naiara Galarraga Gortázar — EL PAÍS