Galway woman wants deported husband ‘home by Christmas’

A Co Galway woman is appealing to Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald to ensure her husband, who was deported to Brazil in July, is “home by Christmas”.

Harriet Bruce of Ballinasloe says Kleber Medeiros, whom she married on December 10th, 2015, in St Michael's Catholic Church in Ballinasloe, was deported in error.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) acknowledges their marriage is genuine and Ms Bruce says their constitutional rights to a family life and to privacy have been infringed by the State.

Mr Medeiros came to Ireland in 2011 on a student visa and was living in Co Galway. He and Ms Bruce met five years ago and began living together in 2013 in Ballinasloe, where she runs a beauty salon and he worked in a meat factory.

The English school he attended closed down in 2012, however, and he lost his student visa. Since then, he had been working and paying taxes and trying to regularise his situation. When the couple got engaged last year, an objection was lodged by a member of the public, alleging theirs would be a so-called sham marriage.

“We were very shocked someone would do that,” Ms Bruce said. “But we thought it would be fine and decided to go ahead with the religious ceremony. We had all the invitations sent out, the hotel booked, the time off work booked. We thought we’d have the wedding day and do the civil registration when it was sorted.”

Objection

Mr Medeiros was, however, deported in early July and remains in Brazil. On July 22nd a letter from the HSE arrived at the couple’s home, telling them the investigation into the objection to their marriage had been investigated, there was “not sufficient evidence to uphold the objection . . . and no impediment to the marriage exists.”

It was a “relief but too late”, said Ms Bruce.

She was in Dublin on Tuesday to meet Oireachtas members, and to hand in a letter to Ms Fitzgerald urging her to "right the wrong" done to her and Mr Medeiros. She wants the deportation order revoked.

She has just returned from São Paulo, where she spent two months with Mr Medeiros, but had to return as her business was closed while she was away, she has to pay the mortgage and her mother, Phil, is elderly.

TD for Roscommon Galway Eugene Murphy said he knew the couple well, as "model citizens whose only crime was to fall in love". Senator David Norris, said what had happened to them was "inhuman and disgusting".

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said it was open to anyone who had been deported to supply additional information to have their case reconsidered.

Ms Bruce says she has done this, including providing proof she was in Brazil for two months and a commitment from Mr Medeiros’s Irish employer to hire him again on his return.