An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record.
His lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye, said Seamus Culleton was a “perfect immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system.
Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton has lived in the US for over 20 years, is married to an American citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. According to Okoye of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts, he was arrested in a random immigration operation on September 9, 2025, while driving home from work.
After being held in ICE facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, New York, he was moved to a facility in El Paso, Texas, where he is sharing a cell with more than 70 men. Culleton said the detention center was cold, damp and dirty and there were fights over insufficient food – “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”, he told The Irish Times, which first reported the story on Monday.
Culleton said that when he was arrested he had a Massachusetts driver’s license and a valid work permit issued as part of an application for a green card beginning in April 2025. His final interview is pending.
When asked to sign a form agreeing to deportation at the Buffalo facility, Culleton said he refused and instead ticked a box expressing his desire to contest his arrest, which he intended to do on the grounds that he was married to Tiffany Smith, an American citizen, and had a valid work permit.
A judge at a November hearing approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which Smith paid, but authorities continued to detain Culleton, initially without explanation.
When his attorney appealed to a federal court, two ICE agents in Buffalo said Culleton had signed documents agreeing to being deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signature was not his. “My whole life has been here. I worked very hard to build my business. My wife is here.”
The judge found irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency. Under US law Culleton cannot appeal, but he wants a handwriting expert to examine the signatures and believes video of his interview with ICE in Buffalo will prove he refused to sign the deportation documents.
Previous high-profile cases involving people from Ireland include Cliona Ward, who had a green card but was detained by ICE for 17 days because of a criminal record dating back more than 20 years. A visiting Irish tech worker who overstayed his visa by three days and agreed to deportation has been jailed for almost 100 days.
Culleton told the Irish Times that he did not know what would happen next and that the uncertainty was “psychological torture”. He said facility officials tried to get him to sign a deportation order last week but he refused.
Okoye said the U.S. government has the discretionary power to release his client and is acting in an inept and capricious manner toward an immigrant pursuing the green card process. “Here’s a gentleman who is a perfect immigrant. He has a successful business, he’s married to an American citizen.”
Smith said she endured five months of heartbreak, stress, anxiety and anger. “I would never wish that on anyone or their family. I’m still praying every day for a miracle.”
After a video call with her husband on Sunday night – her first in five months – Smith told Culleton’s family in Ireland that she had lost weight and hair and had developed wounds and infections. “There’s no hygiene in there. He’s been asking for antibiotics for the last four weeks,” his sister Caroline Culleton told RTÉ. Detainees were rarely allowed outside for exercise or air, he said.
“It’s heartbreaking. We’ve talked about what he endured physically but what about his mental health? How will he deal with it when he gets out? What long-term impact will it have on him?”
Last week the Irish government said the number of Irish citizens seeking consular assistance about deportation from the US rose from 15 in 2024 to 65 last year, a 330% increase.
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