Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/09/irish-man-seamus-culleton-ice-detention

by n1b0m • 5 months ago

323 116 5 months ago

palmotea4• 5 months ago

Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton has lived in the US for more than 20 years, is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area.
...
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).

catlikesshrimp2• 5 months ago

It is not the same thing, but I have an aunt who lived in the US for some 30 years on a green card.

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.

kvgr• 5 months ago

I think once you get citizenship, you are forever taxed on your world income. So it makes sense for some people to not do it.

AnnikaL• 5 months ago

Green cards are for permanent residency, so it makes sense to me that someone would live in the US for 30 years with one. That seems very different than spending over a decade in the US without any permanent status, just temporary visas.

mothballed• 5 months ago

Probably didn't want worldwide tax-serf status or FATCA banking clusterfuck until the immigration politics fiasco changed the calculus enough it was worth the drawbacks.

badgersnake• 5 months ago

I imagine it’s in his wife’s name.

ylow5• 5 months ago

Its not so complicated. Not everyone wants a green card. It triggers international taxation, exit taxes if you give it up, etc. If you can maintain a work permit for 20 years, why not? Until life circumstances change sufficiently that it makes sense to have a green card, the balance of pros and cons may not lean towards it.

colmmacc• 5 months ago

I don't support this kind of detention, but the case reads like he overstayed his original conditions of entry.

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.

palmotea4• 5 months ago

If you can maintain a work permit for 20 years, why not?

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.

diggyhole• 5 months ago

We call this getting paid under the table.

exe343• 5 months ago

Do you really think it would make a difference? POTUS and his entourage have been lying to us on TV while we watch the same clips of their ICEtapo shooting people in the face for brandishing a phone and calling them domestic terrorists. They've picked up people during their citizenship ceremony. Do you seriously think that a piece of paper would make the slightest bit of difference?

SpicyLemonZest2• 5 months ago

Yes. There's a number of people who have successfully defeated the Trump regime's attempts to oppress them by securing a piece of paper saying they're not allowed to. It doesn't work all the time, and you have every right to be furious about the times when it doesn't, but it's counterproductive to overgeneralize and conclude that legal rights don't matter at all.

steviedotboston• 5 months ago

H1-B is for speciality occupations, like software engineers. A laborer from Ireland isn't going to qualify for that. There are lots of people who come to the US on a tourist visa and overstay with the intent on living and working here. They have family or friends who get them set up with a job and place to live. They work under the table, etc. After a while they can live pretty much like a regular American, and in many states get a drivers license. Boston has lots of Irish illegal immigrants, Chicago has lots of Polish.

The way most of them normalize their immigration status is by marrying a US Citizen who can sponsor a green card.

profsummergig6• 5 months ago

Per article he owns a business.

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.

catlikesshrimp2• 5 months ago

The bussiness can be lawfully owned by his US native wife. There are possibilities, but as you say, the article is lacking.

ranger_danger• 5 months ago

People from other countries can own US companies even if they've never been to the US.

profsummergig6• 5 months ago

If we are talking hypotheticals here, anything can be possible. Subject could be an illegitimate direct descendent of Thomas Jefferson, which would make this entire case uniquely newsworthy.

medion• 5 months ago

Even with some co-mingling of facts, is 5 months detention still proportionate? That’s the crux of it.

stackskipton5• 5 months ago

My opinion is probably not but this is ultimately a political conversation.

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?"

nkrisc2• 5 months ago

Still shouldn’t warrant five months of detention.

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.

ylow5• 5 months ago

This is not true. You do not need to be a US resident to register a company, and anyone own shares in a company. There are a variety of visa options, and ways to navigate the process that will work.

profsummergig6• 5 months ago

I realize this is complicated,

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.

bovermyer• 5 months ago

So that deserves five months of imprisonment and inhumane conditions?

Gosh, we have very different ideas of policy.

tty4562• 5 months ago

You should back up "usually"

dietr1ch• 5 months ago

Shoes not tied properly? => 5 months in jail, it's only right.

You seem to be searching for the slightest absurdity to justify any of this happening.

mcphage• 5 months ago

Didn't say "God bless you" when I sneezed?

zarzavat2• 5 months ago

you need a GC to own a business

Citation needed.

goodpoint• 5 months ago

The article is clear: man imprisoned without due process for months.

ck22• 5 months ago

btw Musk overstayed a Canadian student visa to work in the USA, both illegal

and historically documentable

there's probably good reason he's writing 5 Million dollar checks a pop to various PACs

rendx• 5 months ago

you need a GC to own a business

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.

ChrisArchitect• 5 months ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947501

Someone1234• 5 months ago

I'd strongly suggest people read the article instead of discussing the title.

- 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.

culi• 5 months ago

I also strongly suggest people read the ACLU's report Resistance, Retaliation, Repression: Two Years in California Immigration Detention. It's from before Trump 2 but no doubt the issues raised in here have only gotten worse

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"

tty4562• 5 months ago

Add to that : "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". Such bullshit

johnnyanmac• 5 months ago

I'd strongly suggest people read the article

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.

jeltz• 5 months ago

Yeah, I have definitely noticed that a lot of Americans on HN would rather flag uncomfortable articles about their country.

vilhelm_s• 5 months ago

There is a copy of a court order here which gives more legal details [https://www.universalhub.com/files/attachments/2026/culleton...]

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.

empath75• 5 months ago

People should know the legal context of this, which is that the Fifth Circuit is out of step with every other circuit in the country on this.

mikeyouse• 5 months ago

Two judges on the 5th overturned what ~150 other judges have found, including some extremely right wing Trump-appointed ones. Just shambolic.

https://www.lawdork.com/p/fifth-circuit-immigration-detentio...

insane_dreamer3• 5 months ago

It's shocking that the court could determine this when the whole process of getting permanent residency involves an adjustment of status that allows you to remain in the country even though your visa has expired so long as your application is being processed (which can take a very long time). You just can't leave the country. So to arrest someone while they are following the steps they're supposed to be following, is similar to entrapment (do X and you'll be ok, then they do X and get arrested).

kcplate4• 5 months ago

So to arrest someone while they are following the steps they're supposed to be following

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.

bakies• 5 months ago

It's never been about immigration.

betaby• 5 months ago

But what it is about? What's the end game in detaining lawful workers?

femiagbabiaka• 5 months ago

signal fear, which causes a drop in legal immigration

Daishiman• 5 months ago

Paving the way for arbitrary detentions and concentration camps.

throw0101c• 5 months ago

Normalizing paramilitary forces in US cities/areas, especially Democrat-leaning ones. See also early actions of deploying National Guard units (from Southern areas into Northern ones).

daxuak• 5 months ago

Can't you see that they are using immigration questions as an excuse to consolidate power that exceeds immigration enforcement by a large margin? The ability to detain lawful workers or pull people off the street without a warrant from a judge & hold them illegally for a significant duration can become political retaliation or terror tool and a racial profiling vehicle very quickly.

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.

mindslight2• 5 months ago

You know the revanchist militias who would openly hate everything about our country, while claiming to be "patriots" ? You know how they've been awfully quiet lately ? It's about putting them in charge, at least as far as the bottom-up.

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.

kelseyfrog• 5 months ago

The end game?

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.

ck22• 5 months ago

No way LA Olympics can happen

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

fhdkweig• 5 months ago

I'm still trying to figure out the justification of ICE operating in foreign countries. Are there illegal immigrants in Italy? This is not about immigration.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7007390/2026/01/30/ice-wint...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/at-winter-olympics-pr...

gamesbrainiac• 5 months ago

We have seen many stories like this. Some doubt the authenticity, but what is evident is that these things are happening again and again with impunity. Perhaps you don't think the situation is bad enough, or the details are exaggerated.

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.

balozi• 5 months ago

As presented, that dude's story as makes little sense to anyone familiar with the immigration process. There is more to this story, I wish the reporter would just tell it.

jzebedee• 5 months ago

If it surprises you, then you haven't paid attention to the blatantly unconstitutional actions of DHS in this administration. The purpose is terror and filling deportation quotas, not enforcing immigration law.

temp8830• 5 months ago

So that's the narrative. But if you actually dig into any of these stories you'll quickly find that there is more to them and they are all presented in a very one-sided fashion.

The guy from the article would have been deported by Biden's ICE too.

runjake• 5 months ago

This is the location he is lodged at. Note the tents don't yet appear in the imagery.

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).

instagib• 5 months ago

He overstayed the 90 day fiancé visa. Got married eventually. That should have triggered a 5-10 year bar from re-entering the US.

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.

FireBeyond• 5 months ago

He overstayed the 90 day fiancé visa. Got married eventually. That should have triggered a 5-10 year bar from re-entering the US. He could have applied for legal status immediately and it is usually waived if you pass the interview process.

"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.

vargr616• 5 months ago

i fully agree with deporting the first "lady" on the same grounds. We either respect the rule of law or we don't

bichiliad• 5 months ago

I don’t think these ends justify the means. It sounds like the government failed early on in what seemed like a benign infraction, and now it is deciding to punish him for it. That’s like getting away with not returning a library book, and then being arrested and taken to prison for thousands in overdue fees when I try to return it later. That’s arbitrary and excessive, hopefully found to be a violation of due process, and should not be defended.

1attice3• 5 months ago

Why is this flagged? As a former foreign TN-1 visa holder, this sort of thing is (a) topically relevant to me, _qua_ software engineer, and (b) technically interesting.

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.

oh_my_goodness• 5 months ago

The idea that the US operates under a system of laws is now too controversial for HN.

metalcrow2• 5 months ago

For a real answer, if something being posted to HN only requires it be relevant to someone and be interesting, doesn't that mean that anything is allowed? There is currently a conflict between groups of HN users as to what is reasonable to post here and what isn't.

1attice3• 5 months ago

That is how the guidelines read. If practice varies from theory, one must ask who, and what, is being practiced.

tamimio• 5 months ago

Mr Culleton said he would like Taoiseach Micheál Martin to mention his case to President Donald Trump when he visits the Oval Office next month.

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.

tim333• 5 months ago

Probably some Palantir software flagging him for having been illegal in the past.

Irish man with valid US work permit held in ICE detention for five months

Related Stories