Cork asylum seeker wants to leave Ireland after father and brother jailed pending deportation

Cork-based woman says relatives detained in immigration operation remain in overcrowded prison as family seeks return to South Africa

Madeleine Breetzke, her brother, Daniel, and their mother Antonette. Picture: Sam Boal/Collins

A woman who had been living in Cork while applying for asylum said all she now wanted was to be able to leave the country with her family, after her father and brother were jailed pending deportation.

Madeleine Breetzke, 25, said the family was traumatised after her father, 58, and her brother, 23, were arrested at the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) in Dublin, last week.

The arrests were part of a “day of action” in which 38 people whose asylum applications had failed, were arrested, and detained in Dublin last Thursday.

Her father has been “begging” her mother to get them out of prison, but Ms Breetzke said they would not be released until they are to board a flight back to South Africa.

Her father and brother said they were sharing the same bed in a cell with four other men in Cloverhill Prison. The cell has only three beds but has at least one mattress on the floor, she said.

Prison overcrowding has been an escalating problem, with record numbers of people already jailed and the spike in immigration-related arrests adding more people to the already heaving system.

In Cloverhill on Wednesday, there were 490 people in custody, with 53 people sleeping on mattresses on the floor, as it was at 113% capacity (with a total of 433 beds).

"My father and brother cannot be released until the flight. I was told that will not be longer than two weeks, and then we'll be safe to return home," she said.

Her father, who has heart problems and is recovering from cancer, has lost a worrying amount of weight in the days since his incarceration, she said.

And although he is being given his medication in prison, the family is concerned for his wellbeing due to his fragile health.

The violent death of a prisoner in an overcrowded cell in Cloverhill in 2024, for which another prisoner has been charged with murder, has been seriously worrying the family.

“My father's not sleeping because he's worried about my brother, they're in a jail cell with criminals," Ms Breetzke said. But the men both call their family every day and have told them not to worry.

Ms Breetzke previously told the Irish Examiner they were begging the Irish authorities to remove their deportation orders in case it prevented them from being able to claim asylum in another country.

US president Donald Trump has been offering asylum to white Afrikaners like the Breetzkes.

But the family says they have been so traumatised by their time in Ireland, with their father and brother jailed, they just want to leave as soon as possible, regardless of any legal implications to their deportation orders.

“We don't really care about that at the moment. We just want to get out and go home," she said.

“As long as we're together as a family, that is the only thing we want.

“What happened here with our family, we're too afraid to go to a different country, we just want to go home.” 

She said they do not know where they will go when they return to South Africa. Their farm outside Johannesburg has been stripped of materials in their absence, but their sole focus now is leaving Ireland together.

“When we arrive in South Africa, we will worry about how to survive there,” she said.

“At the moment, the only concern we have is getting on a plane and going home as a family.”