Campaigners protest over asylum seekers' deportation

Dozens of protesters gathered outside a Government department today to condemn last week’s deportation of failed asylum seekers to Nigeria.

Rosanna Flynn, of Residents Against Racism, said they were considering taking the “brutal and callous” deportation to a human rights authority.

She said some of the 28 people sent to Lagos on a late night chartered plane included an 18-year-old forced to leave his sister, Irish citizen children and a mother, who left without her child.

As 30 people protested outside the Department of Health and Children, Ms Flynn said: “We are very concerned. If Ireland cannot handle this it needs to be taken to a higher authority. It is a human rights issue.”

She said this was the first time they had heard of a mother leaving her child behind and said the 17-month-old boy was in a distressed state.

Politicians from opposition parties including the Labour party, Sinn Féin, and the Green Party, as well as independents, vowed to hold an Oireachtas all-party meeting to deal with deportation issues.

A Nigerian asylum seeker, Debra, who has a 17-month-old girl born in Ireland, said she was fearful for her own situation.

She said: “I feel bad, especially for the woman that left the baby behind her. I am not happy about it but there is nothing we can do about it and that is the problem, but we are pleading for the Government to help sort the present situation.”

Debra said some of her friends were upset as they have been given a deportation letter from the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

Following the vote in favour of the citizenship referendum in June, children born to non-national parents are no longer entitled to automatic Irish citizenship.

Independent TD Finian McGrath said he was horrified the Government was allowing the late night deportations to take place.

The Dublin North Central representative said: “I am very annoyed and appalled that they would actually come in and round them up and deport them Nazi-style.

“Have we lost our own sense of history? We are an immigrant nation.”

Labour’s Joe Costello said the deportations could be breaching the constitutional rights of the family and likened them to a “thief in the night separating families”.

He said there has to be legislation introduced to deal with the situation of children born in Ireland.

A Garda spokesman said the Nigerian mother had left her child with a partner legally entitled to stay in the country.

Ms Flynn claimed the woman had not realised she was being deported.

She said the women who were looking after the child only found out she had been deported when the lady telephoned from Nigeria.

Ms Flynn said: “We know where the child is simply because the child’s carer contacted us. The mother is desperately keen that the child is not put into care but that it is left in a loving environment with people that he knows.”