Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
- Unsafe conditions in detention.
- Detained people fighting over food (due to insufficient amount).
- A fake signature(!). Violating a judge's orders.
- Multiple US Constitution violations (which, yes, does apply to non-citizens/work-visa holders/even illegal immigrants).
This is a "hero case," but if this is happening here, imagine what people with less financial means and interest from the media are going through.
https://www.aclunorcal.org/publications/resistance-retaliati...
Some of those issues:
- forced labor in order to afford to eat. The $1/day "Voluntary Work Program" is necessary to afford enough food and there is retaliation if you refuse (including solitary confinement). CoreCivic sells your labor
- dozens of documented deaths from forced labor and medical neglect
- extensive use of solitary confinement often for "minor disciplinary infractions or as a form of retaliation for participating in hunger strikes or for submitting complaints"
People will just flag it instead, sadly. Concentration camps in full view (or rather, the tip of the iceberg) and people will instead bury their heads.
> The Fifth Circuit has held that the VWP statute “‘unambiguously’ limits an alien’s means of contesting removal solely to an application for asylum.” McCarthy v. Mukasey, 555 F.3d 459, 460 (5th Cir. 2009) (citation omitted). And once an individual violates the terms of the VWP by remaining in the United States for more than ninety days, the individual is no longer entitled to contest removal on any other basis. Id. at 462. This is true even when an individual has a pending adjustment of status application on the basis of their marriage to a U.S. citizen. Id. at 460, 462.
> Culleton concedes he is removable under the VWP. Reply 10. But he argues that because USCIS accepted and began processing his adjustment of status application, he is entitled to due process protections in its fair adjudication. Id. at 9. The Fifth Circuit has foreclosed this very argument, reasoning that the VWP waiver includes a waiver of due process rights. See Mukasey, 555 F.3d at 462. And “[t]he fact that [Culleton] applied for an adjustment of status before the DHS issued its notice of removal is of no consequence.” Id.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/fifth-circuit-immigration-detentio...
I think the issue complicating this man’s situation is that it appears when you dig into the details that for nearly 16 years he was skirting the system and only tried getting his legal situation resolved just a few months prior to his detainment. He is choosing to fight it which is resulting in the long detention.
Personally I believe we need some legal carve outs for this type of situation, but there is simply no doubt that this guy made a series of poor decisions prior to April of 2025 that has created the situation he is in.
https://www.universalhub.com/files/attachments/2026/culleton...
There are quite a few missing but important details not in the news story. Apparently he complicated matters and put himself into a no win legal situation by choosing against applying for asylum. The “forged” signatures turned out to be a close match to checks that were provided to the court that he admitted to signing. He also admitted to the court that his memory was hazy around that time. There was also no need for immigration officials to forge his name on those documents because if he refused to sign the notice document it had the same legal result as if he did. SOP would be for an immigration official to simply indicate “refusal to sign” on the document.
Unfortunately our laws don’t always protect us from ourselves.
This is the one thing that pops up often in these cases and my European head can't understand this. Obviously people do this because they can but why does the system allow this? People should be forced to sort out their legal situation one way or another in timely manner, because if something happens after decades (like what's going on now) it will cause lots of damage for many people including families with children. This many people living in legal limbo also encourages lawless behavior of the agencies.
It would be very hard to skirt the system like that in many European countries. Not impossible, some people do it anyway, but that means more or less living completely underground without healthcare, driving license, any sort of banking etc.
Two law changes was added last year to prevent this. First, any decision remains in force indefinite as long the person remains in the country. The second is that all applications will be running simultaneous and the final decision is given at the same time, with no option to change application afterward if the result returned negative.
The system has some drawbacks, especially if the applicant apply for the wrong thing and don't change it until the decision has been reached, but it removes stalling and delaying tactics.
Yes but that still means communicating with the institutions and having some sort of legal status. What is en masse happening in the US and to a lesser extent was (or is, not sure, but see for example the Windrush scandal) happening in the UK is that people legally enter the country and have for a time legal standing to reside there, but that lapses, laws change etc., and just nobody cares deeply enough to solve the situation one way or another? And then decades pass and bad things start to happen. But all of this was entirely avoidable and I don't mean just 'not voting for Trump' avoidable, but in a systematic manner.
We could compare that to the situation in Spain where there is a group of illegal migrant workers who are exploited as cheap work force. Now they are given a chance to legalise their status but that too is happening after decades of neglect. Of course there are similar groups in other countries.
The term we should be using here is human trafficking. It is a extremely common practice in construction and farming. As a police officer said here in Sweden in a news article, if they went to a single major construction site the yearly budget for human trafficking violations would be used up for that site alone. It is an open secret that construction sites has a tier based system for workers, where the most illegal workers (and there are different degrees to that) get the most dangerous assignments, least amount of safety equipment, longest hours, and with the lowest pay.
A lot of the calculation on the cost of reduced immigration get based on the resulting increase in costs to construction and farming. It is quite insane how much of the economy is based on exploiting people.
The only thing that changed was the introduction of the "hostile environment" policy in 2012, meaning that everyone (including full UK citizens) must now prove that they have permission to be in the country before getting a job, renting a home, getting a bank account, etc.
The Windrush generation always had that permission, and continued to have it - what they didn't have was the documentation to prove it. And, to make matters worse, the Home Office had disposed of their arrival records so in many cases it became all but impossible for them to get it.
(I know this is a minor quibble, but I think it's worth pointing out that the people affected shouldn't have needed to regularise their situation, because it was never irregular in the first place!)
This is what I don't agree with and exactly why I mentioned Windrush as an example. The situation was irregular because while they were legally entitled to stay, they didn't have a simple way to prove it. And once they needed that, it became an issue.
Now I assume most of them regularised their situation and some didn't and since the state knew enough about them to try to deport them, it should have fixed their status in the first place by issuing them the needed documents. But it didn't! And that was my original point - the state neglected their situation for decades, let them adapt to changing legislative environment on their own (or not), only to swing the axe (wrongly) without warning. If they were issued a citizen ID long ago none of that could ever happen.
With a DL check cashing is a snap and it looked like this guy was a building sub-contractor which can and often operate in cash. Cash secured credit cards give you access to plastic. Healthcare doesn’t require an ID and hospitals are compelled by law to treat you if you are in a life threatening situation. Urgent care clinics will gladly accept cash to fix your sniffles.
I think the biggest issue that allows it is just inconsistent enforcement of our immigration laws from administration to administration and the general bureaucratic reset that happens every 4 to 8 years.
The government always cares when it is not getting its share, but enforcement is probably more by accident rather than intention. If you are living modestly and are not calling out any sort of government paper trail to yourself (avoiding government services, police interactions), you are probably not going to attract any investigation.
These sweeps that we are seeing change that a bit. Easier to get ensnared.
However, the fact that a man can be pulled of the street despite having legal status should be alarming. You don't need to care about the Irishman, but you should care about justice.
He could have applied for legal status immediately and it is usually waived if you pass the interview process.
Instead, 20 years later he applied for a green card to get a temporary work permit which is usually granted eligible while applying for permanent residency. So he had no work permit or valid status for 20 years.
5 months in detention seems like a long time. They offered to deport him but he refused and supposedly DHS forged his signatures.
It’s a messy case but he could have avoided the detention if he willingly asked to be deported immediately then fight for immigration status from where he has citizenship.
"Why do people come here illegally? Do it properly!"
I immigrated here from Australia. It would have been cheaper, and faster, to come here on the VWP, get married, and apply for forgiveness, than to do it legally.
Look at our current first lady. Comes here as a working model on a tourist visa. That should also have triggered a ban from re-entering the US.
It's all just such a mess. Revisiting this point:
> He could have applied for legal status immediately and it is usually waived if you pass the interview process.
I got divorced (we had a sincere intent, but we acknowledged we got married sooner than we would if it wasn't for logistics), and missed one of the dates for AOS. To be clear, at that point it's not just that they say "Oh, whatever", it's that the onus is on USCIS to show fraudulent intent. We'd already had some fairly detailed interviews, separately. "What day does the garbage go out? Who usually takes it out? Who is your auto insurance through? What cars do you own between you? What was the last major update done to your home?" and so on, to demonstrate that you'd been living together in a genuine relationship.
The guy from the article would have been deported by Biden's ICE too.
Usually a pre-Green-Card work permit doesn't allow that (you need a GC to own a business).
This article is an example of sophisticated co-mingling of facts and omissions, designed to obfuscate the context.
The article is extremely light on details but fact he doesn't have a Green Card/Lawful Permanent Resident yet would indicate that at some point of his time in United States, he was illegally present, probably for a while.
Sure, he's on path, MAYBE (that's up to immigration courts), to legal status but he's not quite there yet and it's one of those "Are we going to forgive past transgressions?"
How do you conclude that from the facts in the article?
Also, despite all the US screaming about "They took our jobs" with immigrants, the US doesn't really hand out work visas all that much and don't really hand it out to blue collar labors at all.
There is a possibility that he's been on legal visa entire time but I'd give extremely good odds that he wasn't. The fact his immigration lawyer doesn't mention it is very telling.
> Culleton entered the US in 2009 on a visa waiver programme and overstayed the 90 day-limit
> 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
That's about 15 years of illegal stay according to "the facts in the article".
Reading over court filings, there is collision between two laws. First one is, "Those who marry US Citizens can get Green Card regardless of previous US Immigration violations."
Second one is, VWP admits have no rights. If US decides to deport you, out you go with no further discussion.
Biggest takeaway of Trump immigration actions is Congress has fucked up so bad letting system get to this point.
That is absolutely false. I know many people who have lived legally in the USA for many many years with valid visas and have intentionally never pursued a green card. Two people come to mind including one who has over 20 years the US on valid visas -- she intentionally never pursued the green card despite both (a) being married to an American and (b) being legally able to get the green card.
Some of them are now pursuing green cards only because of federal government's immigration enforcement not only going after illegal immigrants or criminals but clearly and intentionally pursing immigrants in general -- even those who are legal and without any criminal history.
One was on a student visa for undergrad and then a student visa for masters for 6 years total (4 for undergrad and 2 for masters), then on a G4 diplomatic visa while working at the World Bank for 5 years, then back to a student visa for 5 years pursuing a PhD, then back to a G4 Diplomatic visa for 6 years while working at the World Bank. This person married an American about 10 years ago and still never pursued a green card out of choice.
Another was on a G4 diplomatic visa while working at the IDB for 3 years, then a student visa for 5 years while pursuing a PhD, then a visa while working at the Federal Reserve for a number of years (not sure of which, but either H1B or J1), and then on a G4 diplomatic visa while working at the IMF.
Of course, these are not your typical situations for the average immigrant. Admittedly, I live in a bit of a bubble surrounded by economists in Washington DC from the World Bank, IMF, IDB, etc who are mostly on G4 diplomatic visas.
My point is it is still possible and one shouldn't presume.
You can presume when you read the article and realize he was working in blue collar trade so your experience does not apply.
EDIT: And they would likely transition to Green Cards the second that their work visas expired.
When discussing this with friends, multiple spouses have pulled out green cards and only newly weds had anything else but green card. She showed her passport with some form attached to it.
Also, I did dig up the court filings: https://habeasdockets.org/media/documents/71921787/004_18103...
Yes, he was here unlawfully (Admitted as tourist and overstayed) for a period but due to his marriage, he on path to Green Card.
This is incorrect. You do need to pursue it. Just because your friends did pursue it once they were able to, doesn't mean it is automatic. One needs to decide if they want to get their green card or not once they are married to a US citizen.
Which is (or was) a good deal, but hardly a formality.
For ICE enthusiasts, forgiveness is reserved for Presidential candidates.
For a productive member of society? Absolutely, bring him in and let him stay.
There are absolutely some immigrants who should be deported for violent crimes and likewise, but they are a tiny minority of immigrants. So when you set quotas far above that, they start rounding up productive members of society to fill the quotas and ignoring the violent criminals because it’s easier to arrest parents and children.
Other countries will either summarily deport you and make you resolve your status from outside the country, or let you stay while you appeal and deport you when your appeals are exhausted. Both are sane things to do, this is not.
Other parts of the world believe in human dignity and helping people fix the things that are broken in their lives. Look up Norwegian prisons...
Additional context: he claims ICE forged his signature on legal documents.
He should be free while the case proceeds. Seems like exactly the kind of person who is not a flight risk, because the entire reason he’s contesting it is because he’s built a life he doesn’t want to leave.
I didn't say you needed to be a US resident to register a company.
I said that most pre-GC work-permits (e.g. H1B) don't allow you to own a US-based business. If you're here on a work-permit, they (the govt.) expect you to be an employee of your sponsor, they don't want you to start a business.
To your point,
one can be an investor in a US company without having a US visa/residence/work-permit. Although, to open a business without living in the US, only a handful of states allow this (e.g., Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada).
However, once again, if you are in the US on a work-permit, you need to follow the rules of the work-permit. The rules applicable to non-citizens who are not living in the US on a work-permit may be different.
Really, I am just saying that the statement "you need a GC to own a business" is far too broad a claim to be true.
You can absolutely own a US-based business on a H1B, like you can buy shares in companies, it's just a 100% share. You just cannot work for your company without having an approved H1B from that business or having some other generalized work permit like an EAD.
That you are not allowed to work for a business (even if you own it) without a work-permit to work for it.
Gosh, we have very different ideas of policy.
You seem to be searching for the slightest absurdity to justify any of this happening.
Citation needed.
and historically documentable
there's probably good reason he's writing 5 Million dollar checks a pop to various PACs
You are mistaken. Plenty of people own businesses in the US even as foreigners. I don't even have to step into that country to open one, and also not for a transfer of ownership/shares.
Right now ICE hasn't opened any of their human warehouse "internment camps"
and their quota is "only" 3000 souls per day
Now scale that out 1,000 more days and predict what's going down
Every tourist will be a viable target, there are no consequences for arresting people with paperwork, it just meets quota
Heck they could be grabbing athletes, there were some events this year in US where athletes from various countries in Africa could not get visa permits
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7007390/2026/01/30/ice-wint...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/at-winter-olympics-pr...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/toWTEuEPDXigwwr78
https://maps.apple.com has higher resolution imagery, but note the location is mismarked (the old facility was by the airport).
The tens of thousands of detainees aren't being put in hotels... they're going to concentration camps; either in USA where they're forced to work (slavery you might term it, as many (most?) have not broken the law, nor been detained legally); or abroad where the regime's intention appears to be that they die.
And more over, they basically have proved that the law has no sufficient ability to actually enforce court orders on the ground when the administrative branch is firmly on not obeying them. Even worse, the public opinion has been just mildly annoyed by this - by mildly I mean that only some people decided to bring themselves to the streets, separately and only on the weekends or a single day in most cases.
The top-down is something like destroying the United States and subjugating what remains, with many foreign interests aligned here - Russia, China, Big Tech eager to create their surveillance society, religious fundamentalists who just want the world to burn so their ideologies might regain relevance, etc.
It is a salve for the status wound the dimished social and economic station poor white males found themselves in after the civil rights act and the deindustrialization.
It assumes that "I deserve the benefits I or my family once had because I see someone else that now has them."
It sees the social and economic territory as fundamental limited and wants to secure a living space within them.
And it does so by binding to the state and using the state to create that void so that they can regain what they feel was lost.
It must feel amazing, like psychic fentanyl to see what's going down.
What is the valence of deciding that 'curiosity' (the HN gold standard for relevance) does not include topics like this?
HN, blink twice if you can hear me; the billionaires seem to be foisting a worldview on us through you.
> ...
> 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.
Something doesn't add up. How do you live in the US for 20 years (I assume doing plastering work), and only just apply for a green card? Is it common for people to get an H1-B or something like that for such work? Even so, I'd think it would be relatively easy for an Irish person to jump from that to a green card (unlike someone from India or China).
She had been working all that time (employed) and she owned an apartment in Miami. She didn't give a royal fuck about citizenship, and only acquired it some 10 or 15 years ago due to mounting pressure from family.
There is no doubt it was the best course of action given the current government actions.
Edit: Moreover, she practically can't speak english. Her spoken spanish has acquired a strong cuban ring, although she hasn't been to cuba, go figure.
According to the court order, he entered the US on the Visa Waiver Program in 2009. He may have a work permit now because anyone can file for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) through an I-765 while they are applying for a green card through marriage, but there's no indication that he had work permits before that. I've encountered Irish people throughout the US in similar situations.
I do agree that really that the core issue is not with this one particular case, but broadly a pattern of how people are treated, and a failure of due process. People make mistakes. Governments are made up of people who also make mistakes. Process is how you catch mistakes and minimize its occurrence. A failure of due process reduces trust that even fully legal aboveboard immigrants will be treated reasonably and fairly. And that is reducing my confidence that I will be staying in this country long term.
The other side of the coin is that outlets like the Guardian have been intentionally omitting details and writing misleading headlines and stories in order to exaggerate things in a partisan manner. If the person's immigration status from 2010 to mid 2025 was legal, they would've posted that. They have been literally quoting his lawyer in the article. There's been several dozens of such intentionally misleading articles.
But did he? The OP is mum on the matter about what kind of work permit he had for the 19 years before applying for a green card last year. If he did have some kind of work permit, it sounds like a really strange situation. The article says was running his own business, was he sponsoring himself on a temporary worker visa or something?
Given the gaps in the article, I think it's fairly likely he didn't have work permit until recently, and was working here illegally for most of that 20 years.
There is an obligation that a reputable newspaper will publish all relevant facts. The initial version of this article was misleading and appeared to omit relevant context to create a sympathetic story.
However, the article has since been updated:
> 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, [his lawyer] told the Guardian. “He had a work-approved authorisation that is tied to a green card application,” she said.
> ...
> 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.
So it sounds like he was living and working illegally in the US from 2009 until April 2025. It's not clear to me if "statutory exemption" should legally shield him from deportation. Some cursory LLM searches say it doesn't, but I don't think that's definitive.
> And finally, does it matter? Even if deportation is fully legally and ethically justified, do the ends justify the means?
What do you mean? Does the ends of having enforced laws justify enforcing the law? There's a lot going on with this administration an immigration that's totally unjustifiable (like deporting people to random countries with poor human rights records that they have no connection to), but deporting someone who appears to have long violated immigration law back to their home in a first-world country is not some moral outrage. Trying to promote this case into an outrage does no one any good. It only undermines the credibility needed to call out real outrages.
laws are a (social) technology, enforcing them blindly is just as stupid as any kind of extremism, like "just ban private property" or "just let the market sort it out" and everything in between, and around. ("yes, all men" and so on.)
after all there are laws about detention too. if I were DHS I'd be very afraid not to get picked up by law enforcement for breaking them. oh wait. :(
and yes, there's a political goal. the polity wants to remove some people. the machinery is set to work. still, there are better and worse ways to do this. keeping this guy in this hunger games box is more expensive and less humane than putting him on a plane to Ireland.
That's just your opinion, and a controversial one.
> after all there are laws about detention too. if I were DHS I'd be very afraid not to get picked up by law enforcement for breaking them. oh wait. :(
And honestly, detention conditions/process along with ICE tactics are where the focus should be, which are egregious and unacceptable and there seems like a consensus against them. But it's overreach to try to delegitimize all deportations or those of non-criminals, and that works against addressing the more serious issues. IMHO, polarization and overreach in the other direction gives the ICE abuses more cover than they'd otherwise get.
> and yes, there's a political goal. the polity wants to remove some people. the machinery is set to work. still, there are better and worse ways to do this. keeping this guy in this hunger games box is more expensive and less humane than putting him on a plane to Ireland.
Honestly, I think that could probably happen pretty fast if the guy wanted it. It seems like this guy is fighting his deportation through a PR campaign (e.g. drum up sympathetic coverage and hope that the rules are bent for the white guy).
The way most of them normalize their immigration status is by marrying a US Citizen who can sponsor a green card.
Wow, so basically a banana republic, any matter should be resolved by one person, literally the president himself!!
> "To this day we still don't know why he was picked up by ICE.
I think they are thinking of “criminal records”, and they see there’s nothing so it should be ok, but I suggest they dig deeper, it’s not about crimes anymore, he probably said something in social media criticizing XYZ and that’s enough to flag him for deportation, that’s the reality now.