Gisele Fetterman still loves her husband — despite his issues — but not her president

From an undocumented immigrant to wife of U.S. senator

Her background and beliefs are unique for the wife of a U.S. senator, and she is hardly reluctant to express them. However, Gisele Barreto Fetterman is now wading through her husband’s worst period of his life, and while standing by his side, does not always agree with him philosophically.

What makes her unique is that she was at one point in her life an undocumented immigrant, and she discusses that pain and fear very readily. As such, she is opposed to the current president of the United States, who has tremendous antipathy toward immigrants in general, particularly those who are undocumented.

Earlier this year, after the murder of a man in Minnesota by an ICE agent, she made clear her antipathy for the Trump policies that led to his death,

Barreto Fetterman, who had lived undocumented in the U.S. for more than a decade after emigrating from Brazil, posted about the emotional toll caused by President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other cities.

“Every day carried the same uncertainty and fear lived in my body — a tight chest, shallow breaths, racing heart,” she said in a post on X in late January, the day after a Border Patrol agent fatally shot civilian Alex Pretti. In the same month, an ICE agent fatally shot civilian Renee Good and the agency detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.

“What I thought was my private, chronic dread has now become a shared national wound,” she added. “This now-daily violence is not ‘law and order.’ It is terror inflicted on people who contribute, love, and build their lives here. It’s devastatingly cruel and unAmerican.”

Aliya Schneider, “Gisele Fetterman’s X and Instagram profiles are now inactive weeks after she spoke against ICE,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 5, 2026

Background

Gisele’s background has influenced every part of her adult life after arriving in America at the age of 7.

Barreto Fetterman immigrated to Queens with her family at age 7 in December 1989 to escape what she called normalized violence in Brazil. She overstayed her visa and became undocumented before getting her green card in 2004 and becoming a citizen in 2009.

The hardest part of being an undocumented child was knowing she was doing something wrong while her family was doing “everything right,” she said. She got good grades at school, they paid their taxes, and volunteered. Her mom worked multiple jobs as a cleaner, coat check, server, and caterer.

She had to be careful not to be too active and risk injury because they didn’t have health insurance. She was terrified when there was an unexpected knock at the door or if a police car passed by, but her mom had a positive attitude and made everything a game with each day full of “adventures and hurdles that we had to overcome to get to the next level,” she said.

She was taught not to draw attention to herself — which she said lines up with her personality because she doesn’t like attention to this day, whether by way of birthday parties or the media.

Aliya Schneider, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 11, 2025

Relationship with John Fetterman

Her mother was a nutrionist and educator with a Ph.D. from Brazil, but when she arrived in New York, she had to work at menial jobs because she was undocumented.

Gisele received a green card in 2004 at the age of 22 and became a citizen of the US in 2009. In 2007, she met John, who was mayor of Braddock, when she wrote a letter to him about the community, and they married in 2008. They are the parents of three children.

She became very active in Braddock, starting the Braddock Free Store, which provides goods for lower income families. She also co founded 412 Food Rescue, another non-profit that tries to provide food for needy families.

She became Second Lady in Pennsylvania when her husband was elected lieutenant governor in 2018, and then US senator in 2022.

However, while her senator husband ran as a progressive Democrat, he has changed dramatically and has embraced many of the most controversial policies of Donald Trump, including support of ICE and the undeclared war with Iran. This has led to his rejection by Pennsylvania Democrats and concomitant and unlikely embrace by Republicans who despised him when he ran after suffering a stroke during his campaign.

Met with Trump

Her husband’s unbelievable embrace of Trump has devastated her, but she took advantage of his being the first Democratic senator to meet with him at his Florida home.

Fetterman said with Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, “every single day is a heartbreak.”

She said immigrants helped keep businesses open during the COVID-19 pandemic, pick food we eat every day, and overall “contribute so much to society.”

“But not only that, like they’re just humans, and that’s enough, right? I think contributing is great, but just wanting a better life for your family is enough,” she added.

But she said that in order to get through the rest of Trump’s administration, “we have to have conversations with each other.”

That’s why she decided to meet with the president with her husband at Mar-a-Lago. It was the first time a sitting Democratic senator met with him at the Palm Beach resort.

Barreto Fetterman said she went to tell her story and advocate for other undocumented immigrants who came to the country as a child — “not to be naive to think I’m going to change his mind, but I should at least try.”

She said she told Trump about “the contributions of dreamers” and that undocumented families “are not numbers,” but “real people.”

“And in that meeting, about dreamers, he said he agrees,” she said. “He said that dreamers are American. He said many of them don’t even speak their native language.”

Philadelphia Inquirer, 2026

She has not deserted her husband, whom she still loves, but his change has left some bitterness in her heart. Her husband will no doubt be defeated at the polls in the Democratic primary in 2028, and at that point, she may go in her own direction — again.