Gareth O'Callaghan: New York Irish keep their heads down this Thanksgiving due to ICE

Many Irish people — and people of Central and South American heritage, regardless of their residency status — are keeping a low profile amid Donald Trump's ICE purge 

Hospitality workers in handcuffs after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Delta Downs, Louisiana. Gareth O'Callaghan also explains why he scrapped his plan to travel to the US this year amid the ICE purge.  Picture: ICE/AP

It’s almost 80 years since the novelist EB White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web, published an essay titled “Here is New York” — a love letter to the city that never sleeps — in which he shares his thoughts about its residents, culture, and history.

It’s perceptive and nostalgic, and it’s how I remember my time there.

“So complete is each neighbourhood,” White writes, “and so strong the sense of neighbourhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village.”

As I write, we should be packing for a trip to Brooklyn for Thanksgiving. We decided to scrap that plan last May.

Sometimes you have to go with the mood of a place, and what you’re feeling and, right now, the mood in the States feels too volatile to entice us across the pond.

Our plan was to spend a few days with friends. Tom, whom I’ve known since college, has lived there since 1997 with his wife Carmen, whose parents left Venezuela 50 years ago. 

Brooklyn — like so many locations that befriended the emigrant over the years — has seen changes in how its immigrant population goes about daily life.

Fear on the streets due to ICE

“It’s not the same anymore,” Tom explained during one of our lengthy chats last week, “and it’s unlikely ever to be what it once was.”

The reason? Fear on the streets — the relentless threat of being confronted and detained by officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It’s reached the point where you don’t have to be the specific target of a search operation; it can be the result of finding yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A man is detained during a protest in Paramount, California earlier this year after a swoop by ICE agents. Picture: Eric Thayer/AP

Lifted and taken away without discretion in some cases.

It’s unforgiving for anyone who has overstayed their permitted time in the country. For those already in the US waiting for permanent residency, Trump’s decision earlier this year to stop processing green card applications is a reason to worry.

It never stops, and that’s the mood in Brooklyn. 

That mood has escalated since ICE intensified its immigration purge earlier this year.

Watching evening news footage of shackled immigrants on military deportation planes is chilling, and it serves as a reminder to anyone who is not a US citizen that they could be next.

Deportations of Irish people rise 

Between January and September this year, 99 Irish people were deported, according to ICE statistics — that’s a 50% increase so far when compared to 2024.

Some 56 Irish nationals were arrested in New York. 

It might be a miniscule number but, when more and more people without a criminal record are being detained, that’s a serious concern.

Bay Ridge in Brooklyn is known as “little Ireland” for obvious reasons.

My first visit many years ago left a lasting impression. I could easily have stayed, and I was given plenty of reasons to. It’s more home than home — “so strong the sense of neighbourhood” as White writes.

Take a stroll in Monsignor McGolrick Park on a Sunday afternoon — the location for many of Bay Ridge’s Irish cultural events — and try to place all the accents, and then tell me where you would find anywhere like that at home. 

Whether in Bay Ridge or 10 miles north in Monsignor McGolrick Park in Greenpoint (above), this part of Brooklyn is known as 'little Ireland' due to the generations of Irish people here. Picture: Wikipedia/Jim Henderson

In Brooklyn, it’s all about family. It’s where everybody knows your name.

Is there even a pub that comes close to Farrell’s Irish Bar, near the south-west corner of Prospect Park? It’s a community centre and a town hall rolled into one. Locals are its trademark since 1933. Police officers, lawyers, construction workers, and firefighters all share the same bar counter. One of its part-time bartenders, Vinnie Brunton, a captain from Ladder 105 in Brooklyn, died in the September 11 attacks.

The Wicked Monk pub is where you’ll get the full Irish with black and white pudding. Key Food and Superfresh are the shops where you’ll find Barry’s Tea and Tayto crisps. The Cathedral Basilica of St James is packed every Sunday morning.

This is one of the last great Irish enclaves, but the locals are terrified.

Nobody wants any trouble around here, people just want to be allowed to get on with their lives; which is why ICE officials are not welcome in this tight-knit Irish community that has thrived since the first immigrants arrived here in the 1840s.

No doubt, the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Sunset Park is a chilling reminder to Brooklynites that this is where those detained by ICE are held these days. Known for its inhumane conditions, the notorious prison is where over 100 recently detained immigrants are now in limbo.

Tom reckons many residents of Bay Ridge support Trump’s initiatives to get criminals off the streets, but he says it’s widely agreed that a dangerous line is being crossed with the wrong people often being detained.

Irish man held for 100 days for overstaying his visa by three days due to illness  

In a cautionary tale, a 35-year-old Irish engineer and father of three arrived in West Virginia to visit his girlfriend around this time last year.

Under the visa waiver programme, he was allowed as a tourist to remain in the States for 90 days. He was due to return home last December, but badly tore his calf and was having trouble walking.

A doctor warned him not to travel for up to 12 weeks because of the risk of blood clots, so his trip was delayed.

As a result, his visit ran beyond the expiry of his authorisation (by only three days), which eventually landed him in ICE custody.

Over the course of the next 100 days, he was detained in three different facilities where conditions were appalling, with no explanation for why he was being detained or when he could return home. 

Eventually, last March, he was escorted onto a flight back to Ireland by two armed federal officers and banned from entering the US for 10 years.

It remains unclear why he was detained for so long for what is a minor immigration violation. 

What’s more concerning is that it could happen to anyone. The White House has set ICE a goal to arrest 3,000 migrants a day.

The reason I take out holiday insurance before travelling to the States is to safeguard against the prohibitive costs that quickly build up in the case of a medical emergency.

So what happens if my stay runs beyond my authorised 90-day limit as a result of my recovery?

Any of us could be held by ICE

Could that make me a target of Trump’s immigration purge? In short, the answer is yes.

Tom’s wife no longer socialises with friends.

Before Trump’s first term in office, she never felt conscious in public of her family background or skin colour. 

Now, that has all changed. 

She goes to work and comes home. She refuses to open the door to callers. She feels like a detainee in her own home.

She’s aware that many of the immigrants that ICE is targeting are from Central or South America, which makes her feel vulnerable despite being a US citizen.

“It’s like a trigger when the first thing they see is the colour of your skin,” she told me. 

The fear that armed men in plain clothes and unmarked cars, who often identify as police officers — they are not police officers — are watching local schools and places of worship has changed the once-familiar way of life in Brooklyn.

Tom apologised to me last May when I told him we had decided not to travel.

“We just don’t want any unnecessary attention brought on ourselves right now,” he said.

No doubt that’s what most hardworking American immigrants will be hoping for this Thanksgiving.