What will happen to the 65 failed asylum-seekers who were deported this week? Derek Scally meets some of them in Bucharest.
Caterina's day began in Dublin's Mountjoy jail and ended in a grimy waiting room in a Bucharest airport. She's been awake for more than 24 hours and rubs her eyes in frustration and exhaustion. She says she is 37 years old but she looks at least a decade older. Her dark, thinning hair is drawn back on her head, the skin is drawn tight over her face. Lines ridge her forehead and there are dark smudges under her unhappy eyes.
"I went to Ireland two years ago. I worked as a cleaner in a four star hotel, everyone in Dublin knows it," she says in a soft, tired voice. "They paid me €6 an hour and it really suited me." A brief smile flickers across her lips then her face hardens. "Then somebody spilled the beans on me." Caterina is one of 53 Romanian nationals who were deported from Ireland on Thursday morning after their applications for asylum were refused. Many had spent the previous days in Mountjoy prison before they were flown to Bucharest's Baneasa Airport on a charter plane, which then continued on to Moldova with 12 deportees on board.
Romanian border police processed the returned nationals - 34 men, 12 women and seven children - on arrival. All had left Romania legally as tourists in the last two years but 12 now face charges of illegally crossing a border and 15 were fined. All had their travel documents revoked and face a ban of up to five years on leaving Romania. Only 15 were carrying valid passports, delaying the identification procedure.
It was nearly 1 a.m. yesterday morning when a group of six men and women left the airport on foot, trudging through the snow and down the motorway, trailing their bags behind them.
"We love Ireland and don't worry, we'll be back soon," says one man in his mid-30s, with a big smile.
There are no smiles on the faces of those still inside the airport. Either their papers are out of date or they have none at all and are waiting for border police officials to establish their identities. They sit, dazed or dozing, in the waiting room. Nobody pays any attention to the blaring television on the ground or to the no smoking signs on the wall.
Most have already left, like the wide-eyed young people that sat in a corner, obviously terrified by the experience. Some are more relaxed. One middle-aged woman says she is relieved to be back: she spent four years working in Ireland with her daughter, a college student, but presented herself to the Irish authorities to be repatriated because she was worried about her parents in Romania.
Many of the men say they are going to try and get back to Ireland in the next days, with or without a passport.
"Ireland was great. I got money even when I was in jail. Food, a place to sleep and €2 a day," says one man in his mid-30s. Another man from Transylvania says: "I earned more money per week in Ireland than the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu." The average gross salary in Romania is €150 a month. Everyone in the waiting room said they had applied for asylum but were in Ireland to earn money for a few years and then return to Romania.
Caterina and Ion, her husband, say they entered Ireland legally as tourists two years ago. Neither had residency or work permits but Caterina used the documents of a Romanian friend and says her boss had no idea she was an illegal immigrant. Ion says he was one of four illegal Romanians working for a construction firm, building apartments in central Dublin.
The couple applied for asylum after their apartment building was raided 18 months ago but say that it was a purely economic decision to go to Ireland.
"I was in France before and people told me you can earn better money in Ireland," says Ion (44), his ruddy face and rough hands making him look in his mid-fifties.
He was picked up by authorities a week ago on the street near their Ranelagh apartment. Two days earlier, on February 5th, three plain-clothes officers visited Caterina at work and brought her with them to Mountjoy prison, where she spent the next week.
"It was totally out of the blue. I had no idea. I felt really, really bad, I cried," she says, holding back tears. "People were speaking in English to me. I understood but I couldn't reply. I was really upset." She says there were no questions after she was detained. She was treated very well by the authorities. She couldn't sleep more than two hours a night in prison, even after taking sleeping pills.
Romanian authorities say 89 nationals were sent back to Bucharest from Ireland last year, a tiny number compared to more than 8,000 returned from Italy, for instance.
"The asylum applications of these people were rejected because Ireland views Romania as a democratic country," says Ioenela Roman of the chief directorate of the Romanian Border Police. She says the border police in Romania take great care to check people leaving the country.
Last year over 1.2 million Romanians, a threefold increase on 2002, were refused the right to travel because border guards felt the final purpose of their travel was not touristic. "We take good care at our borders," says Roman.
Romanian authorities are not aware of any immediate plans to deport any more Romanians from Ireland, she says, but the authorities keep in regular contact.
Border police officials at the airport say they were given a week's notice by their Irish colleagues about this week's deportation. They call it a run-of-the-mill operation. The deportation received little coverage in the Romanian media.
Pepene Viorel was woken at 7 a.m. on February 8th by the Irish officials calling to his Terenure apartment in Dublin. He packed a bag in less than 10 minutes and left with the authorities, whom he described as "very polite, very friendly".
The 40-year-old man is separated and has an 18-year-old son in Romania. He worked in construcion and lived with a brother in Dublin. He found Dublin very expensive and found it difficult to save money although he had several jobs.
"Everyone that goes there goes to earn money. They all apply for asylum but money, that's the real reason, believe me," he says, smiling and showing a mouthful of gold teeth. Four months ago he met a woman in his local Spar shop. She is from Tallaght and they are planning to get married in Romania and return to Ireland.
Florin Cavaler (30) has given up hope of returning to Ireland. He's lived in Dublin since 1997 and received a work permit two years later. He married an Irish woman, Frances Moran, and took her surname but was deported on Thursday because he has no residency permit and his asylum application failed.
"I have a P45, a P60. I'm angry with the Irish authorities for threatening me. Why don't they give me the right to live there?" he says. "This is my second time being deported even though I love my wife and she loves me. She converted to the Romanian orthodox faith for me. This isn't one of those marriages where you pay." He says they are now planning to go and live in another country.
"I asked the Irish officials to deport my wife with me, but they refused. I'm not going to let some Irish officials tell me what I can do with my life," he says.
As the night wears on, some of the deported nationals are allowed leave and drift out into the snowy night. Others have a long wait ahead of them, like Josif Fagoras, a dark, slight Roma man with a haunted look in his eye. He has no documents apart from a fake passport and he says he doesn't know how old he is. "I think I'm 27," he says. He left behind his Romanian wife and three young children under seven, one of whom has Irish citizenship. His road to deportation began eight months ago when he was stopped for speeding while bringing his sick child to the hospital, he says. When he couldn't produce any documentation to prove his identity he was sent to Mountjoy for seven months. After his release, when he had no ID to renew his green book, he was deported.
"I haven't any news from my wife in four days now. She doesn't know anything about how I am," he says, anxiously twisting a tissue around his fingers. "They don't believe I have no papers, they think I am lying, but I really don't have anything that they want." Caterina is trying hard to stay awake, but is finding it difficult. She is upset at how things ended in Ireland, but happy she went and says she will have to think before returning. "People respected me in Ireland. Everyone treated me very well, even the people at the airport," she says.
As soon as her passport is renewed, she is free to leave. She has a nine-hour train journey ahead of her to the home of her 20-year-old daughter. "All I want now is a shower and to sleep. And to see my grandson. He's only a month old and I haven't seen him yet, only photos." It's after 3 a.m. on Friday morning in Bucharest. Outside, the snow covering the runway illuminates the dark. Inside, the sound of "La Bamba" wafts through the smoky air, but no one feels like dancing.
Some names have been changed