Children ‘missing’ as deportation order confirmed

Two children of a Nigerian woman were still ‘officially’ missing last night after a judge decided that she was lawfully in custody awaiting deportation.

Mr Justice Michael White heard yesterday that Gloria Okeralen had not been totally candid in evidence that had been presented to the court about gardaí having allegedly taken the two children, aged 8 and 5, and having “distributed them to persons unknown.”

Anthony Moore, counsel for the minister for justice, said Ms Okeralen, of College View, Ballymun, Dublin, had made very serious allegations against members of the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

Mr Justice White, after hearing an Article 40 application testing the legality of Ms Okeralen’s detention in prison, said authorities were still not aware of the whereabouts of the children who also face deportation.

It transpired she signed an authorisation for the gardaí to leave the children in the care of a friend who had passed them on to the family’s pastor who claimed to have given them to a woman he did not know.

Mr Moore said gardaí did not know where the children were.

The judge said Ms Okeralen “disappeared off the face of the earth” following the signing of a deportation for her and her children in 2008, and had only been discovered by chance last week when gardaí had called in relation to inquiries about someone else.

Killian McMorrow, counsel for Ms Okeralen, had told the court she had been trafficked into the EU for sexual exploitation and bore certain scars which objectively demonstrate branding or indentured servitude for sexual purposes.

Ms Okeralen and her children now face deportation as soon as her children can be found.