Irish woman held by ICE for five months 'fortunate' not to be deported 

Irish grandmother Donna Hughes-Brown with her husband Jim Brown.

An Irish woman living legally in the US who had been held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility (ICE) for nearly five months has been freed and is now back home with her family.

59-year-old Donna Hughes-Brown said she was "fortunate" she was not being deported but said she would not be visiting Ireland until she became a naturalised US citizen.

The grandmother has been living in the US since she was 11, and is a green card holder. She was arrested after landing in Chicago on a flight from Dublin in July after attending a funeral in Ireland and visiting her relatives in Cork and Drogheda.

After being detained at the airport by customs, she was transferred to an ICE detention centre in Chicago, before being moved to Campbell County Detention Centre in Kentucky — a six-hour drive from her family home in Missouri.

"I spent most [of my five months in detention] in Kentucky at the Campbell County Detention Centre," Ms Hughes-Brown told RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Monday.

"There were a lot of issues going on. 

She said it had not been an ICE facility for very long so "there were a lot of issues". She said they "hadn't been used to having ICE detainees there".

It was dirty, there were critters, all kinds of bugs in the holding cell when we first got there. There was faeces on the wall, they gave us mats that hadn't been cleaned, and it smelled really, really bad.

"That was not the worst of it. The food was horrific. I have certain food allergies, and they didn't seem to make much matter for that. 

"We would go without toilet paper. The showers, the sinks and the toilets would stop working, and it would take anywhere from four to five days to several weeks for them to get fixed."

Ms Hughes-Brown's arrest came following US president Donald Trump's amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act as part of his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act". It stated that any foreign-born resident of the US who had violated any law at any stage in the last two decades could be deemed inadmissible or barred from entering the country.

The case that saw Ms Hughes-Brown detained was in relation to two cheques, which totalled less than $80, that bounced more than a decade ago

"Thirteen years ago, I was in a situation where I had written a cheque to a grocery store with the understanding that the cheque was fine, that the money was in there. Subsequently, [I] found out after the fact that the cheque was not honoured," Ms Hughes-Brown said.

"I went to the grocery store, made good on the cheque, but they told me that the cheque had already been given to the sheriff's office and that they would let the prosecutor know that I was coming in and had made good on the cheque, but I still had to face the judge.

"In 2015, I was in a bad situation and thought I had everything under control."

She said: "It seems like somebody had access to my account and withdrew some money. Which, again, was unbeknownst to me and that one was for a $25 cheque for gas at a gas station.

"Again, these were not large amount cheques, they weren't cheques intended to defraud anybody. But regardless of my intent with them, the end result was the same, neither cheque was honoured at the time, so two cheques, less than $80," the grandmother said.

Ms Hughes-Brown said she was "absolutely floored" when they arrested her under the charge of moral turpitude and said she "did not even know what" the charge meant.

She added her "lowest moment" was realising she was going to be at the ICE detention centre for a while.

"When I first got there on August 4, I was given a court date on my paperwork for August 13. And I thought, 'Oh well, it's only a couple of weeks, I'll go to court, and I'll be out'.

"They were wrong on my court date, so I had to wait for my actual court date, only to be told that there was nothing that they could do and that I had to remain in custody," Ms Huges-Brown said.

She added the fear of being deported scared "the beejesus" out of her.

"I was housed with women who had committed everything from attempted murder to substance abuse crimes — it ran the gamut," she said.

The entire situation, according to Ms Hughes-Brown, took a "huge toll" both financially and emotionally. Costs included legal and travel fees as well as other fees to provide her with necessities like soap and shampoo, as well as commissary for the phone.

She added while her husband had to travel back and forth several times, he could not see her face-to-face and that she also missed out on her granddaughter's entire soccer season, family game nights, as well as working with her clients.

Ms Hughes-Brown said she was "not chancing" a trip to Ireland until she was a naturalised US citizen.