An Irishman living in the United States for more than 20 years has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials since being arrested last September.
Originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, Seamus Culleton is married to a US citizen and owns a plastering business in the Boston area. He was arrested on September 9th, 2025, and has been in an Ice detention facility in Texas for nearly five months, despite having no criminal record, “not even a parking ticket”. In a phone interview from the facility, he said conditions there are “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.
Culleton said he was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit issued by the US government when he was pulled over by Ice on the way home from work in September. His work permit was issued as part of an application for a green card which he initiated in April 2025. He has a final interview remaining.
After his arrest, Culleton was allowed a brief phone call to his American wife Tiffany Smyth. She said she “broke down and cried. To know he was just taken, and he or I had no idea where they were taking him, was traumatising”.
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For five days, Culleton was held in a small cell overflowing with other detainees, then flown to a Buffalo, New York, Ice facility.
In Buffalo he was interviewed by an Ice agent, who asked if he would sign a form agreeing to his deportation. Culleton said he refused, and instead ticked a box where detainees can state they wish to contest their arrest. He wrote down that his grounds for contesting were that he was married to a US citizen and had a valid work permit.
He was then flown to the Ice facility in El Paso, Texas.
He said he has been locked in the same large, cold and damp room for 4½ months with more than 70 men. He said detainees are constantly hungry because meals served at tables in the centre of the room offer only child-sized portions. Fights often break out over food, “even over those little child-sized juice containers”. Toilet areas are “filthy”.
He said there is little to do but lie on a bed all day. Most detainees do not speak any English. He said he has been allowed outside for air and exercise fewer than a dozen times in nearly five months. The atmosphere is full of “anxiety and depression”, he said.
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At a November bond hearing, a judge approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which his wife paid. When nothing further happened towards his release, they learned the US government had denied the bond, initially without explanation.
This is unusual, as is the length of time Culleton has been held. According to a recent New York Times article, US courts are being “deluged” with Ice detainee bond hearings, as “federal judges have found that the Trump administration has been ignoring longstanding legal interpretations that mandate the release of many people who are taken into immigration custody if they post a bond”. Most applicants are now being released on bond.
Culleton’s attorney, Ogor Winnie Okoye of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts, then appealed the case to a federal court, where two Ice agents claimed that in Buffalo, Culleton had signed several documents agreeing to be deported.
However, he is adamant he did not and says the signatures are not his. “My whole life is here [in the US]. I worked so hard to build my business. My wife is here,” he said.
Although the judge noted numerous irregularities on Ice’s court documents, she ultimately sided with the agency.
Under US law, Culleton cannot appeal, though he would like the signatures to be examined by handwriting experts and believes a video of his interview with Ice in Buffalo would prove he refused to sign any deportation documents. He has no idea what will happen now and said the waiting is “psychological torture”. He says facility officials tried to get him to sign a deportation order last week, but he refused.
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“You have one section of the government trying to deport me, and another trying to give me a green card,” he said.
Okoye said Culleton’s case is very unusual and that before the current Trump administration, a person in his situation – with a valid green card application made on the basis of marriage to a US citizen – would not have been detained and would almost certainly be granted the residency and employment permissions applied for.
She said Culleton was picked up on a random sweep for immigrants and continues to be held without charging documents, adding that the US government has acted in an “inept” and “capricious” manner.
In a case such as Culleton’s, the government has a “discretionary” option to simply release him but inexplicably has not done so, she said.
“Here’s a gentleman who is a model immigrant. He owned a successful business, he’s married to a US citizen,” and is properly going through the green card legal process, she said. It makes little sense that he would have agreed to be deported, she said.
Culleton’s wife Tiffany said she has endured “five months of heartbreak, stress, anxiety and anger”.
“I would never wish this on anyone or their family. I am still praying for a miracle every day.”
His sister Caroline Culleton said what concerns the family most “is Seamus and how he is coping, his physical and emotional state; the conditions that he is forced to bear are beyond comprehension.
“We are totally devastated by this situation, it’s a torment on a daily basis. We can only hope that this whole nightmare will come to an end very, very soon.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said the department is “aware of this case and is providing consular assistance. As with all consular cases, the department does not comment on the details of individual cases”.
Ice has been contacted for comment.
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