Seamus Culleton, the Irishman being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) prison in El Paso, Texas, is enduring an immigration nightmare. Unfortunately, it is one that is all too common nowadays as Ice, the deportation agency of the United States government, seems set on driving every foreign-born person with visa issues out of the US.
The intention is clear. Immigration was a huge winner for Donald Trump in 2024, so why would he not unleash the dogs on more undocumented black and brown folks for 2026 during the midterms? Back in 2024 the race baiting was unabashed. “Haitians eating dogs”? Check. “Mexicans raping young women”? Check. Nothing was off-limits then, and now it is being ramped up even more aggressively.
The highly offensive cartoon shared online by Trump depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes is just one example of the memes being trawled in the gutter press and setting the racists alight.
As a result, it seems there will be few limits on steps taken to stop immigrants getting their green cards – even those showing up for their last interview with final signing-off papers clutched in their hand.
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Culleton, from Kilkenny, was arrested in Boston in September last year, even though he had been in the US for 20 years and is married to a US citizen.
But the fact is that even before the Trump smackdown, he very likely would not have obtained his green card because he had overstayed his 90-day visa. And though he had an 18-year-old minor drugs transgression in Ireland, he had a clean record since coming to the US. Despite this, he was set for deportation.
What is happening in practice is that the 90-day overstay visa cases – which is the one most undocumented Irish entered under – are being decided against the immigrant. The draconian new laws seem to be part of the Trump administration’s policy to make conditions so arduous that inmates will pledge never to come back to the US. It is no surprise that the Texas judiciary, which is among the harshest in the US, is handling much of the immigration issue.
Ice intimidation of detainees has become a very widespread practice.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen on a day-to-day basis. You don’t know if there’s going to be riots, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Culleton told RTÉ. He called the detention facilities “a bunch of temporary tents”. Welcome to Club Fed 2026.
[ Ice detention camp, where Irishman is held, under scrutiny for unexplained deathsOpens in new window ]
But he’s not the only one. We know that other Irish have been picked up. Ninety-nine Irish citizens were deported between January 1st and September 2025.
It’s likely that the numbers have actually increased since then. Some Irish-American leaders believe Ireland could have escaped the crackdown, but what is seen by some campaigners as a “woke mentality” among the Irish was to blame for the no visas for the Irish outcome. Countries such as Australia carved out special visa exemptions for their citizens two decades ago, but the Irish never grasped the opportunity when friends of the Irish such as senator Edward Kennedy, senator John McCain and former president Bill Clinton were in power.
Ciarán Staunton, cofounder of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, points to demands that the Irish only seek visa programmes if the programmes also included the rest of the world.*
“The visa programme was there, as we proved in Morrison and Donnelly visa schemes, but we were too busy being world citizens.” Soon, he said, an Irish person with a green card in New York “will be as rare as a dodo bird in Central Park Zoo”.
But there is hope. There has been some surprising pushback to Trump in the Irish-American community.
Sean Pender, chairman of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest Irish group in the US, did what might once have been unthinkable and accused a US president of racism.
“The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemns in the strongest possible terms the racist depiction of president Barack Obama and Mrs Michelle Obama as apes that was shared from President Trump’s social media account. This is not a political statement, but a moral one founded in our Irish history and Catholic faith.”
That is new territory for Irish Americans, a demographic among which Trump achieved strong support – and he would be very keen to retain it.
The fear in Irish communities across America is real. In the Ice hotbed of Chicago, Fr Jerry Boland, a noted immigrant advocate, suggested on RTÉ that the St Patrick’s Day parade might be avoided by immigrants, so afraid are his Irish parishioners. In New York, GAA members expressed concerns about Ice agents turning up at games. Fears are being shared about Ice turning up at summer Irish festivals.
But Trump’s crackdown on undocumented foreigners is turning out to be a Pyrrhic victory. His poll numbers are plunging, with the latest approval rating falling to 36 per cent, where it was 47 per cent at the start of his second term.
As his bloodstained Ice operatives streamed out of Minneapolis at the weekend, they left behind the bodies of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, memorialised forever in a Bruce Springsteen ballad and the knowledge that people power can best all. “We’ll take our stand for this land and the stranger in our midst,” Springsteen sang and one million marched on the coldest day of the year.
The Ice strategy is nothing new. Pro-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan and anti-Asian mobs held large rallies against immigrants in their day. Today’s xenophobia is just as crude as previous efforts, the largest of which – Operation Wetback, introduced by then president Eisenhower in 1954 targeting Mexicans – failed too.
With his poll numbers tanking, Trump may soon be seeking an exit strategy.
Niall O’Dowd is founder of Irish Voice, Irish America Magazine and irishcentral.com in New York
*This column was amended on February 18th 2026 to clarify Ciarán Staunton’s position
