Government urged to 'cut a deal' for undocumented Irish in US visit

Taoiseach Micheál Martin is set to meet Mr Trump face-to-face for the first time since they both re-took office in his upcoming St Patrick's visit. File Picture: Adam Vaughan/PA

The undocumented Irish in America fear they will be “caught up” in Donald Trump’s vow to deport millions of people, as Micheál Martin looks set to raise the issue when he meets the US president next week.

With the Taoiseach set to meet Mr Trump face-to-face for the first time since they both re-took office, advocates have urged the Irish Government to “cut a deal” with the president to “crack the issue of the undocumented status in America once and for all”.

It comes after Mr Trump declared March to be Irish-American Heritage Month, a common act of US presidents every March, but noted “trade imbalances” between the two countries, as tensions heighten between America and the EU over tariffs and Ukraine.

In a new podcast series, the Irish Examiner visited three cities in the US and spoke to immigration lawyers, Irish community advocates, and the undocumented themselves to learn more about the concerns they have under the new Trump administration.

Prior to his inauguration, Mr Trump said that his administration would aim to deport all illegal immigrants from the US — “starting with the criminals”.

In his inauguration speech, he vowed that the US would “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came”.

'Zero-tolerance ideology'

While some Irish don’t think they will be targeted in the crackdown by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, American-based immigration lawyers said anyone living in the US illegally must take note.

“I think we have to take it at face value and accept what it is they’re saying,” said James O’Malley, a Limerick man and immigration laywer in New York.

“Taking it at face value, it smacks of a zero-tolerance ideology. It doesn’t matter if you were born in say, Co Mayo, or if you were born in El Salvador in pure terms. And I don’t think it would matter.” 

There is no true figure for how many undocumented Irish people live and work in the US, with government estimates putting the figure at around 10,000. 

Many of them have been there for several decades since the last major exodus of Irish people to the US in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dan Dennehy, who lobbies lawmakers as the immigration chair for the Ancient Order of Hibernians, said the undocumented “are not as cavalier now” as they were in the 1980s when they spoke publicly against the “unfairness of the system”.

Most of the undocumented will not do anything to jeopardise themselves

“What they have to be worried about now is somebody finger pointing, exposing them, making people aware of their status, because a lot of them have developed good businesses and good social and community roots," he said.