An Irish grandmother who was held in a US immigration detention centre since July has spoken of her relief after being released.
Donna Hughes-Brown (58) said she was feeling “a little bit overwhelmed” following her release but that it was “fabulous”.
Ms Hughes-Brown is a green card holder and has been a permanent resident in the US since the age of 11, with a family home in Missouri. She was arrested on July 29th when she was returning to the US from a visit to Ireland.
The mother of five was apprehended by a customs official at Chicago airport and transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Kentucky.
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Her court record showed she had signed two bad cheques, totalling less than $80, during a period of personal difficulty over a decade ago.
Speaking to RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland, Ms Hughes-Brown said she was “absolutely floored” to discover over the summer that she was being detained.
She said conditions in the Kentucky facility were “not ideal” and it hadn’t been used to having Ice detainees there.
“It was dirty ... all kinds of bugs in the holding cell. When we first got there, they put us in a holding cell. There was faeces on the wall. They gave us mats that hadn’t been cleaned,” she said.
“It smelled really, really bad. That was not the worst of it. The food was horrific. I have certain food allergies ... We would go without toilet paper, the showers and the sinks and the toilets would stop working, and it would take anywhere from four to five days to several weeks for them to get fixed.”
Ms Hughes-Brown said she couldn’t help thinking about “everybody else” in the facility “that’s still waiting, knowing that I was fortunate, but nothing’s really resolved”.
“There’s a lot more work to be done ... I mean, my case is done, but there are so many folks that are facing similar situations, or even different situations.”
Ms Hughes-Brown said that 13 years ago she had written a cheque to a grocery store “with the understanding that the cheque was fine”. She said she subsequently found out the cheque was not honoured and returned to the grocery store and “made good on the cheque”.
“They told me that the cheque had already been given to the sheriff’s office and that they would let the prosecutor know that I’d come in and made good on the cheque but I still had to face the judge,” she said.
Ms Hughes-Brown said in 2015 she was “getting out of a bad situation” and had come to find out someone had access to her account and withdrawn money unbeknown to her.
“That one was for a $25 cheque for gas at a gas station. Again, these were not large amount cheques. They weren’t cheques that were intended to defraud anybody,” she added.
The grandmother said her lowest moment was when she realised she would be in the detention facility “for a while” and that she feared she might be deported.
Ms Hughes-Brown said her faith in God and the support from her family kept her going.
“The Irish consulate here in Atlanta was fantastic. There was just a lot of advocacy happening, and that’s what got me through the lowest of the low,” she said.
Her husband Jim Brown campaigned for his wife’s release during her detention, and appeared at two separate House homeland security committees on Capitol Hill, Washington.
Ms Hughes-Brown said the events of recent months had taken a huge toll financially and emotionally and that she “didn’t believe” it when she found out she was being released.
She said she planned to have a quiet Christmas with her family and would not be returning to Ireland until she becomes a US naturalised citizen.
“We are not chancing this again,” she said.
