Melania Trump’s Model Friend Deported by ICE

For years, Amanda Ungaro moved in the same glossy, power-soaked orbit as Melania Trump.

The Brazilian model once posed beside the first lady at Mar-a-Lago, shared intimate dinners with Donald and Melania Trump, and appeared to be part of the elite inner circle built around one of America’s most famous political couples. But what once looked like a glamorous friendship tied together by luxury, status, and proximity to power has now unraveled into a story filled with deportation, custody drama, and fresh questions about the people surrounding the Trump world.

At the center of it all is a tangled connection linking Melania, Ungaro, and businessman Paolo Zampolli, the well-connected Trump ally who has long claimed credit for introducing Melania to Donald Trump back in the 1990s.

Old photos show Melania Trump, now 55, and Ungaro, 41, standing side by side at Mar-a-Lago, smiling for the cameras near a giant Christmas tree with Trump nearby. Both women came to the United States chasing opportunity — Melania from Slovenia and Ungaro from Brazil — and for a time, their lives appeared to follow strikingly similar paths through wealthy social circles.

That changed dramatically.

Ungaro now says that after once enjoying access to Trump’s Palm Beach world during his first term, she was ultimately deported to Brazil by ICE last year. Melania, meanwhile, has remained largely out of public view since returning to the White House — until this week, when she forcefully pushed back against what she called false claims about her alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein and reports that she had flown on his notorious private jet.

The woman connecting these two stories is Zampolli, Ungaro’s estranged former partner and a longtime Trump friend who now serves as the administration’s special envoy for global partnerships, a role that has raised eyebrows because of how closely it appears tied to his personal relationship with the president.

Zampolli, 56, has said he has known Trump since the mid-1990s, after moving from Milan to New York. He has also repeatedly claimed he was the man who first introduced Melania to Trump. According to past reporting, Zampolli met Melania at a Milan casting call, helped secure her U.S. visa, and later introduced her to Trump at a 1998 party at New York’s Kit Kat Club.

By his own telling, he played matchmaker and then stepped away while history took over.

He also said he flew with Trump to attend the future president’s 2005 wedding to Melania at Mar-a-Lago.

This week, Melania publicly rejected another layer of the gossip and speculation that has followed her for years, strongly denying reports that Epstein introduced her to Trump or that she had ever been on the so-called Lolita Express.

Ungaro’s version of life inside Trump’s orbit paints a vivid picture of how close she and Zampolli once were to the couple. In comments to Brazil’s O Globo, she said that after Trump won in 2016, their social status changed almost overnight.

According to Ungaro, Zampolli behaved as if he had won the election himself. She said they were suddenly invited everywhere and that at New Year’s celebrations at Mar-a-Lago, they were seated at Trump and Melania’s table with only one other couple.

Zampolli himself seemed to embrace that image publicly. In one Instagram post, he wrote that he was honored to have been Trump’s friend for more than 30 years and Melania’s friend for 29, adding that loyalty is king.

Ungaro was even handed a ceremonial appointment as an ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations, a role reportedly made possible through Zampolli’s political connections.

But the polished image fell apart.

After ending her 19-year relationship with Zampolli, with whom she shares a son, Ungaro married a Brazilian doctor and was living in Aventura, Florida. Then in June 2025, she was arrested on fraud-related charges and eventually deported for overstaying her visa.

At the same time, she was locked in a custody fight with Zampolli over their teenage son.

That legal and personal battle only deepened the controversy. The New York Times reported that Zampolli sought help from the administration and asked that Ungaro be placed in ICE detention, allegedly in a move that would help him gain an advantage in the custody case.

Zampolli has denied that accusation, calling it absurd. The Department of Homeland Security has also rejected claims that Ungaro’s deportation was politically motivated.

Still, the story has become even more explosive because of another familiar name hanging over it all: Jeffrey Epstein.

Zampolli appears several times in the Epstein files released by the Justice Department. Reports have said he discussed buying a modeling agency with Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail in 2019 while facing sex trafficking charges.

Ungaro has now added her own disturbing account to that broader scandal. She told O Globo that she had been asked to testify before the House Oversight Committee as it investigates matters tied to the Epstein case, though she said she has not been subpoenaed.

She also claimed she flew on Epstein’s plane when she was just 17 years old while represented by Jean-Luc Brunel, the late French modeling executive accused of recruiting young girls for Epstein.

Her recollection of that flight was chilling.

Ungaro said there were around 30 girls on the plane and that many of them looked far younger than expected. She said they seemed more like students than models — young, beautiful, and out of place.

Brunel, like Epstein, later died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial.

Now the once-glamorous Mar-a-Lago connection between Melania Trump and Amanda Ungaro has become something far darker and more politically toxic. What began as a story of immigrant ambition, luxury, and access has turned into a saga involving deportation, bitter custody allegations, and renewed scrutiny of the people who moved comfortably through Trump’s orbit for years.

And with Epstein’s shadow once again hovering over the headlines, the fallout may be far from over.