On the same day First Lady Melania Trump stood in the White House Grand Foyer to deny any connection to Jeffrey Epstein, a series of posts from a woman named Amanda Ungaro started racking up hundreds of thousands of views on X.
The posts were direct replies to Melania’s archived First Lady account. They were personal, combative, and specific. Ungaro claimed a relationship with the First Lady spanning two decades. She referenced being detained by ICE. She threatened legal action. One post pulled in over 300,000 views. Another topped 46,000.
The internet immediately wanted to know who she was.
The answer, as it turns out, connects Jeffrey Epstein, the man who introduced the Trumps, a senior ICE official, and a custody battle that ended in deportation.
will take legal action against you and your pedophile husband.
I have known you for 20 years. You knew I was detained in ICE. You were present in my life — every year on my son’s birthday, even sending Secret Service and being the first to congratulate him, back in 2016.…
— Amanda Ungaro (@AmandaUngaroA) April 9, 2026
A Teenager on Epstein’s Plane
Amanda Ungaro is a Brazilian former model who arrived in the United States around 2002. She was 16 or 17 years old. According to a New York Times investigation and reporting corroborated by multiple outlets, she flew to New York on Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane from Paris.
Her modeling agent at the time was Jean-Luc Brunel, who was later accused of procuring young women for Epstein. Brunel died in a French jail in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of rape and sexual assault of minors.
Ungaro has been cited in recent discussions as a survivor of the Epstein network.
The Man Who Introduced the Trumps
In New York, Ungaro became the partner of Paolo Zampolli, an Italian-American modeling agent. Zampolli is the man who introduced Donald Trump to Melania Knauss in 1998 — a fact both the Trumps and Zampolli have publicly confirmed for years.
Zampolli and Ungaro were together for roughly two decades. They had a son. Both secured United Nations ambassadorships — Zampolli representing Dominica, Ungaro representing Grenada. They attended Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 and, according to reporting, sat at Melania’s table during the dinner.
Getty Images has over 300 photos of Ungaro at diplomatic receptions, galas, and events alongside Zampolli, often in rooms that included figures from the Trump orbit. This was not someone on the margins.
Zampolli currently serves as Trump’s special representative for global partnerships and sits on the board of the Kennedy Center.
How She Was Removed
The relationship between Zampolli and Ungaro ended bitterly. They separated permanently in 2021, and a custody battle over their teenage son followed.
In June 2025, Ungaro was arrested in Miami on fraud charges related to a medical spa. According to the New York Times, Zampolli saw an opportunity. He contacted David Venturella, a senior ICE official, and explained that his ex was in the country on a long-expired visa. During a call to ICE’s Miami field office, Venturella noted the case was important to someone close to the White House. ICE agents picked Ungaro up before she could post bail. She was deported to Brazil.
Zampolli has denied seeking special treatment or requesting that Ungaro be detained. The Department of Homeland Security said any suggestion she was targeted for political reasons is false. A spokesperson for the First Lady said at the time that Melania had “no knowledge of, nor involvement in” the matter.
Ungaro, speaking from Brazil after her deportation, described the experience as devastating.
Two Stories Collide
There is no verified evidence that Ungaro’s posts prompted Melania Trump’s Epstein statement on Thursday. The Latin Times, one of the first outlets to examine the connection, noted explicitly that no major outlet has confirmed a link between the two events.
But the collision is hard to ignore. On the same day the First Lady used the White House podium to say the lies about her and Epstein needed to end, a woman who arrived in this country on Epstein’s plane — whose ex-partner introduced the Trumps, who sat at Melania’s inauguration table, and who was deported after that same ex-partner contacted ICE — was directing posts at Melania from Brazil that were being seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
Ungaro’s specific claims about her relationship with the First Lady have not been independently verified. What has been verified, by the New York Times and others, is the biography that brought her into the Trump orbit in the first place — and the series of events that removed her from it.
The two stories that converged on Thursday — Epstein and immigration — did so in the person of Amanda Ungaro. Whether that convergence is coincidence or something else is a question no one involved has answered.
