A Donegal man living in Boston for more than 15 years is facing imminent deportation to Ireland after being detained by US immigration officials for violating his visa waiver.
The 40-year-old man, who has two American-born children aged nine and 10 and has built a successful business in the Boston area, was recently arrested and brought to a detention centre run by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following a driving-related conviction.
He did not want to be identified.
The man’s lawyer John Foley, an experienced immigration attorney in Boston, said he pushed for the release of his client with an ankle bracelet and 24/7 monitoring but officials declined, saying that they had no discretion in the case.
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“No matter what I said, it didn’t matter. What I am shocked about is how there is no movement at all; there was no discretion at all,” said Mr Foley.
“Never say never but before I went in, I thought there was a 10 per cent chance [of his release]. Now it is 1 per cent.”
The Irish man originally travelled to the US on the visa waiver programme – under which visitors to the US can stay for tourism reasons for up to 90 days without a visa – in his early 20s and did not return home.
Undocumented immigrants who overstay the period of the visa waivers are left in a precarious legal position if apprehended by immigration officials as they have no recourse to the judicial process and face immediate processing for deportation.
There has been a renewed crackdown by the US government on undocumented immigrants since president Donald Trump took office in January.
Mr Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation effort in US history, promising to deport all foreign people living in the country without permission.
Mr Foley said his client from Donegal was now coming to terms with the inevitability of deportation at some stage over the next 10 days.
“They will take him to the airport in chains and shackles and when the flight boards they will take the handcuffs off and allow him to leave on his own,” said the lawyer.
“His main worry is his family, then his business, which is operational. He has family to go back to in Ireland but he came to Boston as a young guy and built up a business here. He hasn’t been back to Ireland in 16 years.”
A colleague of Mr Foley’s is representing another Irishman who is also being detained by ICE and is facing deportation under visa waiver violations.
Mr Foley is expecting more undocumented Irish in Boston and other Irish-American communities to be apprehended by ICE in the months ahead.
He described the mood among the undocumented community in Boston as one of “real fear.”
“Before they leave the house they are looking up and down the street. They might spend nights in different places,” he said.
Mr Foley said a state prosecutor told him recently that witnesses were not showing up as witnesses because there was “a fear of being any place where they could be approached by ICE”.
He said that people who overstay a visa waiver had no rights to “judicial processing”, especially if “they have any kind of criminal charge hanging over them; it doesn’t even have to be a conviction”.
“One guy told me he was screwed by a boss who didn’t give him overtime and he can’t say anything in case that boss makes a phone call,” said Mr Foley.
“In the past ICE didn’t respond to those one-off calls. Now, they do.”
