![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/78e3fd19-2d01-4c33-8c1b-4e02e8fed932.jpg\")
<\/p>\nJames Brown has spoken out about the \u201cegregious\u201d detention of his wife Donna Hughes-Brown (58) by immigration officials in July at O\u2019Hare International Airport in Chicago as she was arriving home from a funeral in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Ms Hughes-Brown, a full-time healthcare worker, has been living in the US for 47 years after moving there as an 11-year-old with her family. She also holds Irish citizenship.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife is not a criminal,\u201d Mr Brown told a local Missouri TV news station.<\/p>\n
“You don\u2019t arrest 58-year-old grandmothers. It\u2019s just wrong. She hasn\u2019t committed crimes. You just don\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She is now being held by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while her distraught husband Jim makes desperate appeals for help in securing her release<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is wrong,\u201d he told local Missouri new TV network KMOV.<\/p>\n
He and Donna, an Irish citizen, were married eight years ago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jim and Donna Brown<\/p>\n
Today’s News in 90 Seconds, Wednesday, September 10<\/p>\n
She came to the US when she was just 11-years-old and became a legal resident alien, or green card carrier, but is not a US citizen.<\/p>\n
However, Jim, a veteran, believes that the fact they are married should also protect her from being deported.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not fair that you\u2019re telling me I have to be a bachelor the rest of my life because of some stupid policy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
She remains behind bars at a county jail in Kentucky, as the US government is attempting to deport her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s egregious that we have allowed a government to allow this to happen,\u201d he told KMOV.<\/p>\n
According to the station, Donna wrote a bad cheque for $25 ten years ago.<\/p>\n
\u2018Crime of moral turpitude\u2019<\/p>\n
She paid it back and got probation but Jim says the US government considers it a \u201ccrime of moral turpitude\u201d, a term used in the immigration context that has no statutory definition.<\/p>\n
Courts in the US consider that moral turpitude \u201crefers generally to conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile or depraved, contrary to the rules of morality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s nonsense. I think it\u2019s a blanket thing to catch everybody, to fill beds,\u201d Jim said.<\/p>\n
A direct result, he says, of the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive immigration policies, \u201cthey signed a stupid bill that is torturing innocent people, and that\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s been in this country 47 years, is married, with five kids and five grandkids, and you\u2019re telling me she\u2019s a flight risk?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With appeals to US representatives having gone nowhere he said: \u201cI somebody to have the guts and the fortitude to stand up and say, \u2018you know what? This is wrong\u2019,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy that this is happening. It\u2019s just crazy that this is even allowed in this country. That\u2019s the problem. It shouldn\u2019t even be thought that this should be OK,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brown, a veteran who served 20 years to fight for the United States, says he won\u2019t stop fighting for his wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife is not a criminal,\u201d he said as he is left caring for their horses on their nine-acre farm near Troy, Missouri.<\/p>\n
![\"Donna](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/b6a9a4a0-529e-4476-9e86-3f7b280e65c0.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Donna Brown<\/p>\n
A GoFundMe for Donna states it was created to help prepare and support Jim Brown\u2019s \u201cfight for justice and freedom of his wife, Donna Hughes-Brown, who was wrongly detained and incarcerated this past July\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to raise the resources necessary to cover the lawyers and court fees, and help Jim and Donna navigate these difficult, stressful , and expensive times,\u201d the appeal reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cJim and Donna are both very strong supporters and helpers of our community. They are often involved with multiple volunteer organizations and projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey both are hardworking, honest, and caring individuals. They are good servers of God; humble people who are always willing to help, and kind friends that shares knowledge and wisdom with anyone in need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed to the Irish Independent it is aware of the case and is providing consular assistance.<\/p>\n
They added; \u201cAs with all consular cases, the Department does not comment on the details of individual cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cliona Ward<\/p>\n
In May of this year, Cliona Ward was released from custody in the US where she had been arrested after she returned from visiting her dying father in Ireland in April.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old who is originally from Dublin, lives in Santa Cruz, California.<\/p>\n
Ward was detained by ICE over minor convictions from almost 20 years ago, which were supposed to have been expunged from her record.<\/p>\n
She was released and told to report to San Francisco with proof of her expungement; however, when she got there, she was re-apprehended, charged with moral turpitude and shipped to Washington.<\/p>\n
The mother remained behind bars in a detention facility until she was released.<\/p>\n
Taking to a GoFundMe page, set up by her sister Orla Holladay, Cliona thanked her family for support and talked about her ordeal for the first time.<\/p>\n
“You know how to weave the strings together to provide due process for the people in ICE detention centres.<\/p>\n
“That is all they need…. They are not informed on how to get out and they are so afraid to speak up for the basic human rights…like how to find council or interpreter services… They give them detention handbooks in English and Spanish only,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
“All done on purpose to keep them detained and deportable. I cannot thank you enough for what you did.<\/p>\n
In March, a 35-year-old Irishman identified only as \u201cThomas\u201d returned home to Ireland, having been detained by US immigration officials for about 100 days in total in three separate facilities.<\/p>\n
Thomas had travelled to the US to visit his girlfriend in West Virginia late last year under the ESTA visa waiver programme which allows tourists to visit the US for a maximum of 90 days.<\/p>\n
However, after seriously injuring his calf, he was advised to avoid flying for at least eight weeks due to a risk of blood clots.<\/p>\n
After overstaying his travel by three days, Thomas, who had booked a flight home for the following week was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after suffering a mental health episode while in a hotel.<\/p>\n
Now banned from travelling to the US for ten years, he said those visiting should take immigration rules \u201cvery seriously\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Brown has spoken out about the \u201cegregious\u201d detention of his wife Donna Hughes-Brown (58) by immigration officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,125,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,26765,1543,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-54780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-keith-kelly","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-us-politics","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}