For folks hwo didn't click, the details of the case:
""And I did, I complied with everything they said. They asked me if I had a Green Card, I said I didn't, I said I was married to a citizen and that I had a marriage-based petition in place and I was just about to receive my Green Card and that I had a work permit to be here and work."
Mr Culleton said however that none of that mattered to the officers and they placed him in handcuffs and took him away.
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He said when he was being processed they tried to get him to sign deportation papers, but he did not sign anything.
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Mr Culleton said he has been detained for five months and locked in the same room for four and a half of those five months and he does not know how much more he can take.
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Speaking on RTÉ's News At One, his sister Caroline said Mr Culleton did not have any convictions in the US or Ireland and they do not know why he was taken by ICE.
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"To this day we still don't know why he was picked up by ICE.
"At that point, he had a work permit but he didn't have his Green Card. He had the work permit as part of his Green Card application, which was 99% processed. His last interview was to be held just before he was picked up.
"That application is still open because they want to complete that," Caroline said.
Here's a couple of important bits that's not in that RTE report:
Seamus Culleton has lived in US for two decades, married a citizen and runs a plastering business but faces deportation
www.theguardian.com
"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.
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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."
And as for the conditions:
"Culleton said the detention centre was cold, damp and squalid and there were fights over insufficient food – “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”
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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."
Going to have to be a very fucking compelling reason for me to visit the US over the next few years...
