Irish man detained by ICE in Texas pleads for help, says he fears for his life
An Irish man who has lived in the United States for nearly 20 years says he fears for his life after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and transferred to a facility in El Paso, Texas, almost 4,000 kilometers from his home in Boston.
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Seamus Culleton, originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, was arrested by ICE agents last September and taken into immigration detention, as first reported by the Irish Times. Speaking from the El Paso detention center on RTÉ’s Liveline, Culleton described what he called “a nightmare” and appealed directly to Irish politicians to secure his release.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “I’m in fear for my life here.” Culleton said he has been locked in the same room for four and a half of the five months he has been detained, with “barely any outside time, no fresh air, no sunshine.” He described “kid-size” meals that leave detainees hungry and “filthy” conditions, saying toilets and showers are “completely nasty” and rarely cleaned. He said he believes he is being held in a complex of tents.
Culleton said he was picked up on 9 September after leaving a Home Depot store near Boston, where he had stopped to return items after work. He noticed a blue Ford following him, he said, before it lit up with blue lights and several law enforcement vehicles surrounded his van. When officers asked about his immigration status, he told them he did not have a green card but was married to a U.S. citizen, had a marriage-based petition in process and had received a work permit a month earlier.
“None of that mattered,” he said. He was handcuffed, taken to a holding cell in Burlington, Massachusetts, and later transferred to Texas. During processing, he said, he was pressed to sign deportation papers, which he refused.
His wife, Tiffany Smyth, told Liveline that ICE allowed her husband only a brief phone call on the day of his arrest. “He rang me and said, ‘Don’t freak out.’ He said, ‘ICE picked me up.’ … Then that was it. The phone hung up and I didn’t hear from him for almost a week,” she said. She later used an online ICE detainee locator to find he had been moved to Texas. Smyth said she booked a flight and hotel to attend a court date set for 9 January, but the hearing was rescheduled the day before she was due to travel and she lost the money.
On RTÉ’s News At One, Culleton’s sister, Caroline, said he has no convictions in the U.S. or Ireland and the family does not know why he was targeted. She said his green card application was “99% processed,” with a work permit already issued and a final interview pending at the time he was detained. “That application is still open because they want to complete that,” she said.
Irish lawmakers have urged immediate action. Fianna Fáil TD for Carlow–Kilkenny John McGuinness said he has briefed the Taoiseach’s office and asked that Micheál Martin raise the case without waiting for the St. Patrick’s Day visit. “I’ll be asking for an immediate response in terms of contacting the White House,” he said.
Social Democrats Senator Patricia Stephenson called the situation “absolutely devastating” for the Culleton family and said the reported conditions amount to a violation of human rights. Labour TD Duncan Smith said Culleton’s account matches what immigration lawyers report about conditions in ICE detention and urged the Government to press the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for data on how many Irish citizens are currently detained.
From detention, Culleton appealed for help: “I just want to get back to my life. We were so desperate to start a family.” He asked that the Taoiseach raise his case with President Donald Trump during the upcoming Oval Office visit. “I’ll take any help I can get now at this point.”
ICE did not immediately respond to questions about Culleton’s detention or the conditions he described. The agency has previously said that detainee care meets federal standards. Culleton said he does not know how much longer he can endure: “It’s just torture. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
