When Irish Eyes Are Lying

There’s something known as ‘the luck of the Irish,’ and for an Irish ex-pat living in the United States named Seamus Culleton, it seemed he had it by the bucketful.

The tall, good looking Irshman had been living in the US for decades, you know. The American dream realized.

Running a business with a little US citizen woman at his side.

He has dogs.

Come on – DOGS.

Until the unthinkable happened, for what he says is no reason at all. Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brownshirted, masked thugs came for him.

WHUD I DO WHEN I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT?

…Seamus Culleton, who lived in Boston, claims he was arrested as part of a random sweep by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in September.

Mr Culleton has been kept in a series of detention facilities, and authorities are battling to deport him from the country where he has lived for decades.

Mr Culleton, who runs a plastering business, is from County Kilkenny but moved to the US some 20 years ago, according to The Irish Times.

He was reportedly arrested by ICE on Sept 9, while he was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit that he was issued as part of an application for a green card.

Mr Culleton, who does not have a criminal record, said he applied for permanent residency in April 2025, and had one interview left before the process was complete.

Mr. Culleton was swiftly whisked off to a detention facility, protesting his innocence with all the fervent, doe-eyed honesty of a Kilkenny choirboy, becoming an international cause celebre in the meantime.

…He was held in ICE detention centres near Boston and in New York state, before being flown to a facility near the Mexican border in Texas where he shares a cell with more than 70 men, most of whom do not speak English.

Mr Culleton likened the detention centre to “a concentration camp” and said the child-sized food portions often ended in fights among the inmates. It is “absolute hell”, he added.

A judge reportedly approved his release on a $4,000 (£2,920) bond, which was paid by Tiffany Smyth, his wife and a US citizen.

The CBS Morning Show ate him up, particularly his tales of the cruelty he faced and the injustice of it all.

Here, they were convinced, was the victim of Trump’s brutality that would finally crack the back of the deportation and immigration sweeps.

Irish national Seamus Culleton described the Texas ICE detention facility where he’s been held for months “like a modern-day concentration camp,” while speaking to an Irish radio station earlier this week.

Culleton has been in the U.S. for 17 years and was in the process of… pic.twitter.com/KavSwgdLes

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) February 12, 2026

…Culleton has been in the U.S. for 17 years and was in the process of trying to obtain a green card. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

ICE agents apprehended Culleton on September 9 for overstaying a visa.

Wait…what was that last thing?

Surely that’s not worthy of being dumped in a ‘concentration camp’ with *gasp* what was that again?

Oh, yeah.

Men who no speaka da English. Almost like they were foreigners or something, although I’d lay you money at least some of them had been in the States even longer than the one guy who did.

Well, the twist to being in the hoosgow is that it turns out Mr. Culleton was given the opportunity to deport directly back to Ireland – do not enter the detention centers – but he chose not to. He decided to stay and fight.

…Seamus Culleton, an illegal immigrant from Ireland was arrested last September by ICE, pursuant to a deportation order after he overstayed his 90-day visa by nearly two decades. Now, for the most cynical of reasons, he is the Left’s new anti-ICE cause celebre.

The pro-Culleton argument is that he had a work visa, a pending green card application, is married to an American and has committed no violent crimes. But none of this changes the fact that his underlying 20-year stay was illegal, and there was an active deportation order against him.

Culleton was given a chance to be taken directly to Ireland, but chose to stay and fight deportation, which he must and should do while in detention. Honestly, the only thing remarkable about this case, and here comes the cynical part, is that he is White and Irish.

So the foreign men and lousy meals are on him.

…In a social media post on Tuesday, McLaughlin said Culleton entered the United States in 2009 “under the visa waiver program, which allows you to stay in the US for 90 days without a visa. He failed to depart the US.

“He received full due process and was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on September 10th 2025.”

He was offered the choice to be instantly deported to Ireland but instead “chose to stay in Ice custody,” she said, in an apparent reference to Culleton’s efforts to contest his deportation.

In any event, back to the sob story.

American Dream Turns Into a NIGHTMARE 

…screamed the Boston Globe headline.

Irishman fears for life after Trump ICE crackdown turns American dream into nightmare

Seamus Culleton married an American, had a work permit, and was one appointment away from a green card. Today he languishes in a “filthy concentration camp” in Texas.

…Sky News wept.

A trans-Atlantic brouhaha arose over the estimable Mr. Culleton, whose pristine and unimpeachable reputation, but for that teensy seventeen year visa overstay, was attested to by no less than everyone short of the Pope.

Mr. Culleton, person after person swore, was a paragon of virtue, who had been treated by the jackboots at ICE like an exile to Devil’s Island.

…Ogor Winnie Okoye, Mr Culleton’s lawyer, described him as a “model immigrant” who “owned a successful business” and is “married to a US citizen”.

Ms Smyth told Mr Culleton’s family in Ireland that he had lost weight and hair and had sores and infections after his months of detention.

Ireland’s government said the number of Irish citizens seeking help over possible deportation from the US jumped more than fourfold to 65 in 2025.

A spokesman for Ireland’s foreign affairs department said it was “aware of this case and is providing consular assistance”.

As with most of these poster children for anti-ICE sympathies, there’s a ton and a half more to this than meets the eye. All it takes is a little time for more information to come out, and this case is no different.

Irish Massachusetts Man – so innocent, such a paragon, fighting to stay in the US on principle?

Turns out, Culleton was doing so because he had originally skipped out of Ireland ahead of multiple arrest warrants, one of which was on drug-dealing charges, along with a few other unsavory details in revealed other charges.

Irishman Seamus Culleton, who is being held in a detention camp in Texas pending deportation, had a warrant issued for his arrest by an Irish court soon after he entered the US as a tourist in 2009.

The District Court in New Ross, Co Wexford, issued the warrant in April 2009 in respect of Culleton, of Kilbride, Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, over the alleged possession of drugs, and possession of drugs for sale or supply, at Ballyverneen, Glenmore, in May 2008.

He was also facing charges of allegedly obstructing a garda during a search by throwing 25 ecstasy tablets on the ground.

A further warrant was issued by the same court in September 2009, in relation to an alleged criminal damage charge from September 2007 at Weatherstown, Glenmore.

No one was more surprised at this sudden turn of events than his ardent legal defender, whom Mr. Culleton seemed to have forgotten to inform concerning his previous troubles back in the auld sod when he hired her.

Link to free-to-read article in today’s Irish Daily Mail about the drug charges against Seamus Culleton and how he evaded the charges by travelling to USA.https://t.co/IJaDour4CK

— nwl (@nwl88444048) February 12, 2026

Must have slipped his mind with all the foreigners around.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Irish government was going to do everything it could to help Irish Massachusetts Man, but he wasn’t specific about what that entailed.

If he gets deported, do the Irish arrest him at the airport or if the Irish are after him, does he qualify for asylum here to a woke judge?

In reality, a Saint Irish Massachusetts Man is no different than any Maryland Man.

Looks like there’s more to the story. From @IrishTimes “Seamus Culleton was facing drug charges at the time he moved to United States; District Court in New Ross issued arrest warrants in 2009 for arrest of man being held in detention centre in Texas.” https://t.co/PZg3qXaFIf

— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 12, 2026

He just speaks the lingo.

 

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