The unimaginable ordeal of Donna Hughes-Brown represents a perfect storm of the worst fears of immigrant communities when it comes to spectre of the ICE patrols storming the cities.
The 58-year-old Irish grandmother and green card holder, a legal resident in the US and an Irish citizen, faces deportation after living for almost five decades in America. She moved to the US as a child.
On the surface, Hughes-Brown’s story seems scarcely credible: a police officer waits on the ramp in Chicago’s O’Hare airport as she and her husband, a US Navy veteran and farmer, Jim Brown, alights to transfer to a domestic flight.
The couple were returning from a 10-day trip to Ireland. Brown was arrested for signing a bad cheque for $25 (€23) a decade ago. She was arrested and has been confined in a Kentucky detention centre operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US immigration agency, ever since.
Chicago has been in ICE crosshairs since US president Donald Trump mused about sending federal troops in to deal with what he insists is a crime issue out of control. The city is one of the most prominent “sanctuary cities” that the Republican administration continually castigates.
Among the recent videos circulating on social media is that of masked ICE agents, in balaclavas and plain clothes, forcibly removing a protester from downtown Chicago.
The person is being physically lifted into the back of a black van by the ICE agents, who remain silent while another protester screams: “Tell us where you are taking them.” The footage has been viewed millions of times. There are similar scenarios playing out in other US towns and cities.
As it turned out, it was Boston rather than Chicago that was subject to a high-profile immigrant sweep by ICE agents last weekend.
The prominent immigration lawyer John Foley, who was one of the first to predict a heightened state of fear for many immigrants after last November’s election of Trump, says that situation has become alarming for many.
“The tension continues to rise. There are more ICE personnel on the streets than ever before,” said Foley.
He said there has been “a negative back and forth conversation” between mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, the governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healy, and Tom Homan,, Trump’s deportation tsar.
“He has threatened to bring hell on the city of Boston, and it is having an impact. So, I am getting calls from people who are out of status and have no path to legalisation. The visa waiver overstays who have been here for many years. And now I am being asked to put together family plans and business plans should they encounter ICE. This would include powers of attorney for friends to take care of minor children and of their businesses,” said Foley.
The attorney has represented several Irish clients who are long-term undocumented identified by ICE through long-standing or more recent legal issues. In such cases, deportation now seems to be an inevitability. There is very little latitude – or appetite – for discretion, as individual cases show.
It is Foley’s belief that the number of undocumented Irish across the United States significantly exceeds the often quoted figure of 11,000. Many of that hidden community have built successful lives and enterprises in the US.
“They are walking around looking over their shoulders now,” he said.
Now is not a good time for Irish citizens to be travelling internationally if they have anything in their past regarding law enforcement
— Immigration lawyer John Foley
“They leave the house and scan the street looking for vehicles that seem out of place. They come and go at different times to change their routine.”
It is understood that at least one Irish citizen was arrested during last weekend’s sweep through the Boston neighbourhoods. But the arrest of Donna Hughes-Brown underlines the fragility of the status of green card holders also.
“I am telling my legal residents who have any criminal history not to travel internationally. And anyone who does, I am giving them a travel letter which lets customs and immigration know that they have an immigration letter, so maybe they will bully the next person in line,” said Foley.
“Now is not a good time for Irish citizens to be travelling internationally if they have anything in their past regarding law enforcement. I don’t really know what they have access to but you have to assume they have access to court records, which is public information. So they can see prior convictions and addresses, and my presumption is that they can trace people that way.”
Foley has a degree of sympathy for ICE officers tasked with chasing civilians with minor legal misdemeanours in order to meet the deportation counts demanded by the Trump administration.
The pinned post of the X social media account of Homeland Security reads: “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need You to get them out.”
They post the arrests and deportations of criminals on a daily basis, complete with photographs and descriptions of often-horrific crimes.
ICE in Boston posted a parade of arrested criminals lifted during its “Operation Patriot 2.0″ at the weekend. Homan also listed four specific arrests of immigrants with previous convictions.
“Shame on governor Healy and Mayor Wu,” he said. “They should be calling the White House thanking President Trump, thanking the White House for making their community safer.”
One of the most embarrassing episodes for ICE occurred in Georgia, when 330 South Koreans with visa permits were arrested during a raid on a newly established Hyundai plant that represented one of the biggest inward investments in the state. South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung called for improvements to the visa programme for skilled workers.
“It’s not like these are long-term workers,” Lee said. “When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work.”
The workers flew home on Friday, reportedly exhausted after their ordeal. The majority are expected to be reprocessed to resume their work at the plant. That raid highlighted the arbitrary nature of the ICE raids.
[ South Korea wants workers detained in Georgia raid to be allowed re-enter USOpens in new window ]
A decision by the Supreme Court on Monday to overturn a federal court order prohibiting Los Angeles agents from questioning people on their immigrant status based on ethnic and language characteristics has added an element of racial-profiling to the operations in that city.
But even as the Trump administration becomes mired in its efforts to broker peace in the Middle East and Russia, and the latest jobs reports signal economic pessimism, the crackdown on the border and its deportation policy remains its brightest success.
For Irish and other immigrant communities, that means things are likely to get worse before – and if – they get better.