Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months

Seamus Culleton has lived in US for two decades, married a citizen and runs a plastering business but faces deportation

Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent

Mon 9 Feb 2026 17.04 GMT

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record.

Seamus Culleton was a “model immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system, said his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye.

Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. While buying supplies at a hardware store on 9 September 2025 he was arrested in a random immigration sweep, according to Okoye, of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts.

Culleton entered the US in 2009 on a visa waiver programme and overstayed the 90 day-limit but, after marrying a US citizen and applying for lawful permanent residence, he obtained a statutory exemption that allowed him to work, Okoye told the Guardian. “He had a work-approved authorisation that is tied to a green card application,” she said.

Culleton’s detention prevented him from attending the final interview in October, she said. “It’s inexplicable that this man has been in detention. It does not make sense. There’s no reason why the government shouldn’t just release him and allow him to attend the interview that will confirm his legal status.”

After being held in ICE facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, New York, he was flown to a facility in El Paso, Texas, where he is sharing a cell with more than 70 men. Culleton said the detention centre was cold, damp and squalid, 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 was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit issued as part of an application for a green card that he initiated in April 2025. He has a final interview remaining.

When asked at the Buffalo facility to sign a form agreeing to deportation, Culleton said he refused and instead ticked a box expressing a wish to contest his arrest, which he intended to do on the grounds that he was married to a US citizen, Tiffany Smyth, and had a valid work permit.

At a November hearing a judge approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which Smyth paid, but authorities continued to detain Culleton, initially without explanation.

When his attorney appealed to a federal court, two ICE agents said that in Buffalo Culleton had signed documents agreeing to be deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signatures were not his. “My whole life is here. I worked so hard to build my business. My wife is here.”

The judge noted irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency. Under US law Culleton cannot appeal but he wants handwriting experts to examine the signatures and believes a video of his interview with ICE in Buffalo would prove he refused to sign deportation documents.

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Previous high-profile cases involving people from Ireland include Cliona Ward, who had a green card but was detained by ICE for 17 days over a criminal record from more than 20 years ago. A visiting Irish tech worker who overstayed his visa by three days and agreed to deportation was jailed for about 100 days.

Culleton told the Irish Times he did not know what would happen next and that the uncertainty was “psychological torture”. Facility officials tried to get him to sign a deportation order last week but he refused, he said.

Okoye said the US government had discretionary power to release her client and was acting in an inept and capricious manner towards an immigrant who was following the green card process. “He’s never been arrested. He’s married to a US citizen. He owns his own business. He’s established a life here. He’s done everything right.”

Smyth said she had 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.”

After a video call with her husband on Sunday night – their first in five months – Smyth told Culleton’s family in Ireland he had lost weight and hair and had sores and infections. “There’s no hygiene there. He’s been asking for antibiotics for the last four weeks,” his sister, Caroline Culleton, told RTÉ. The detainees were seldom allowed out for exercise or air, she said.

“It’s heartbreaking. We’ve talked about what he endures physically but what about his mental health? How will he deal with this when he gets out? What long-term effect it has on him?”

Last week the Irish government said the number of Irish citizens seeking consular assistance about deportation from the US jumped from 15 in 2024 to 65 last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/irish-man-seamus-culleton-ice-detention

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