Missing children not taken by gardaí, court told

The Garda National Immigration Bureau yesterday denied in the High Court it had taken two children, aged 8 and 5, from their mother and “distributed them to persons unknown”.

Anthony Moore, counsel for the minister for justice, told Mr Justice Michael White the children now missing, according to their mother Gloria Okeralen, had not been taken by the gardaí and were not in the custody of the gardaí or the HSE.

He said the court had been told last Monday in an Article 40 application seeking Ms Okeralen’s release from Mountjoy Women’s Prison, that gardaí had taken the children when they called at Ms Okeralen’s home in Ballymun to send her back to Nigeria on foot of a deportation order.

Mr Moore said the Ms Okeralen had, in fact, signed a written authorisation for her two children to be placed with friends. It had apparently transpired the children had been passed into the care of the family’s pastor and then to other unknown family friends.

He told the court an order for deportation had been made against Ms Okeralen in 2009. Since then, she had disappeared until last week when gardaí, who had called to her home, discovered she was the subject of the outstanding deportation order.

Mr Moore said she had been taken into custody and placed in Mountjoy Women’s Prison.

Judge White directed both parties provide the court, by 11am tomorrow, with full affidavits of evidence relating to the deportation file dating back to before 2009 and what had occurred since Ms Okeralen’s arrest last week.