An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record, his lawyer has said.
Seamus Culleton, originally from County Kilkenny, is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. He was arrested on 9 September 2025 during a random immigration sweep while buying supplies at a hardware store, according to his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts.
Culleton entered the US in 2009 on a visa waiver programme and overstayed the 90-day limit. After marrying a US citizen and applying for lawful permanent residence, he obtained a statutory exemption that allowed him to work. “He had a work-approved authorisation that is tied to a green card application,” Okoye said. His detention prevented him from attending a final interview in October that would have confirmed his legal status.
After being held in facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, New York, Culleton was transferred to a centre in El Paso, Texas, where he shares a cell with more than 70 men. He described the conditions as cold, damp and squalid, with fights over insufficient food, likening it to “a concentration camp, absolute hell”. His wife, Tiffany Smyth, paid a $4,000 bond approved by a judge in November, but authorities continued to detain him. ICE agents claimed Culleton had signed documents agreeing to deportation, but he denies this, saying the signatures are not his.
Okoye described Culleton as a “model immigrant” who had become a victim of a capricious and inept system. “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,” she said. Culleton’s sister, Caroline, told RTÉ that detainees are seldom allowed out for exercise and that her brother has lost weight and hair and has sores and infections due to poor hygiene.
