Pregnant woman fearful as deportation splits family apart

BESIDE the door of room seven on the second floor of Dublin's Rotunda hospital 30-year-old South African Tanya Dube lies watched by two plainclothes female prison officers.

She is seven months pregnant, sick, miserable and separated from her family who will shortly be dispersed to different corners of the world.

Arrested on Tuesday morning at her home in Galway as part of the second phase of Operation Hyphen, Tanya was sent to Dublin’s Mountjoy prison pending deportation to South Africa.