Donna Hughes-Brown, the Irish woman who has been held in a US immigration detention centre since July, is to be released in the coming days following a court hearing on Thursday.
Lawyers for the 58-year-old grandmother, who is a green card holder and has been a permanent resident in the US since the age of 11, filed a bond after the immigration judge, Kelly Johnson, ruled she should be released.
“She’s no longer deportable,” her husband, Jim Brown, said shortly after the court hearing concluded.
“The DHS (department of homeland security) can still appeal the decision so that is why our lawyer is filing a bond. If they appeal the decision it can take up to six months for a retrial but we doubt that’s going to happen.”
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Her legal team had about 40 character witnesses ready to testify and a letter signed by 18 US senators stating she should not be detained. The ruling came shortly after the first character witness.
“After that, they realised it was preposterous,” said Mr Brown.
There was an acknowledgment at the hearing of the hardship Ms Hughes-Brown had endured. She was apprehended by a customs official at Chicago’s O’Hare airport when returning from a trip to Ireland on July 29th.
Her court record showed she had signed two bad cheques, totalling less than $80, during a period of personal difficulty over a decade ago.
She was transported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Campbell County, Kentucky, a six-hour drive from the family home in Troy, Missouri.
Mr Brown described the food and living conditions at the detention centre as “appalling” but said his wife had remained resilient throughout the ordeal, passing time by teaching English to undocumented inmates. The family prepared for Thursday’s hearing with no clear idea of her fate.
“She didn’t know anything beforehand. We felt it was a 50/50 chance in either direction – either they were going to deport her or let her stay.”
Mr Brown has been advocating for his wife since her detention and appeared at two separate House homeland security committees on Capitol Hill, Washington, recently. At one, Kristi Noem, the secretary for homeland security, thanked him for his military service in the navy and agreed to examine the case.
“What she has been through is terrible,” he said, adding that he and his wife plan “to work towards immigration reform”.
“We can’t have people being unfairly jailed for this nonsense,” he said.
But for now, the couple are looking forward to getting back to their horse farm in Troy.
“She’s pretty excited,” Mr Brown said. “It will take a couple of days to process but she should be out for Christmas.”
