Irish detainee Cliona Ward 'building community' with women in Washington centre

In an update to a GoFundMe launched on Cliona’s behalf, Ms Holladay said that her sister has been moved from the holding cell, where she had been held since her arrest on April 21, to a pod in the detention centre.

Irish detainee Cliona Ward has been “elevated and empowered” by the support she has received since being arrested by US immigration and customs enforcement officials last month, according to her family.

Cliona’s sister Orla Holladay, who also lives in the US, said Cliona is “building community and support” with the women she has been detained alongside, and that she “wants to help all of them”.

In an update to a GoFundMe launched on Cliona’s behalf, Ms Holladay said that her sister has been moved from the holding cell, where she had been held since her arrest on April 21, to a pod in the detention centre itself in Tacoma, Washington state.

Ms Holladay said that she is working with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the largest unions in the US with whom Cliona holds membership, so that protests take place on the date of Cliona’s preliminary court hearing.

That hearing had initially been scheduled for May 7. However, the latest information received by the family indicates it may well now not happen for a number of weeks.

Ms Holladay is set to attend the hearing in person to support her sister.

Cliona was initially detained in Seattle after returning from visiting with her father, who lives with dementia in Cork. She was held on foot of a number of criminal convictions she had received between 2007 and 2008.

While those convictions had been expunged from her record at a state level, it appears the fact they had not been vacated at a federal level is the reason Cliona came to the attention of US immigration and customs enforcement officials.

Valid green card

Cliona is the holder of a valid green card and has lived in American for more than 40 years.

“She has urged me to tell you that the service people in the facility are being really nice to her — the people who serve the food, who escort her to go get a shower, who make sure she has clean clothes,” Ms Holladay said in her update.

It’s strange that access to a shower [and] clean clothes is a blessing, but right now it is 

Cliona’s older sister Tracey Ward, who lives in East Cork, told the Irish Examiner of the frustrations the family has experienced with the detention centre, a system run by corporations on a for-profit basis.

“Orla is talking to Cliona every other day, and they can’t hear each other properly because the phones in the detention centre don’t work very well. There are a number of phones that just don’t work, which isn’t great because we’ve to pay for the phone, and it isn’t cheap,” she said.

They try to make money every way they can, so we’re paying for these expensive phone calls where my sisters can’t hear each other and end up getting frustrated

She said the mostly Latino women who are detained with Cliona have told her that they are consistently moved from centre to centre across the US, without ever actually being processed.

“Their children have been taken from them and moved to detention centres in Florida or the other side of the country, and they don’t know where they are. When they ask about them, they’re just told ‘they’re ok, they’re ok’,” Ms Ward said.