For green-card holders and the estimated 10,000 undocumented Irish who have made lives in the United States, the harrowing experience of Cliona Ward must have sent a cold chill as summer approaches.
The Cork woman, who has lived in the US since the age of 12, was arrested by immigration officials after returning home to California following a routine visit to Ireland. Initially held for five days in San Francisco by immigration officials, Ward was released and told to report with further documents supporting her expungement for a decades-old conviction in California, for drugs possession and department of motor vehicles indiscretions. Having honoured that request, Ward was told upon her return that the expungement did not apply at federal level.
She was arrested and flown to Tacoma in Washington state, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials shackled and chained her before walking her through the airport to the ICE detention centre where she may have to remain until August before her court hearing. It is one of several high-profile examples of people of all nationalities swept up in the expansive activity of the immigration policy as operated by president Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan. And it has made the immigrant community anxious about what lies ahead.
New Yorker Dan Dennehy is a long-established advocate for immigration reform and current vice-president of the council for America-Ireland relations. Irish immigration services never speak about individual cases. But when we meet on a warm Wednesday in Manhattan, he can say that there are a number of other Irish people whose lives have been upended by immigration enforcement.
“Unfortunately, we have been notified about several people who traditionally have gone through the proper mechanisms, as in scheduled visits with representatives of homeland security about their individual cases, and there is a certain amount of normalcy to that. It is a normal setting where they are given validity through the fact that they have done nothing wrong. And they are told to report again.
“Some of those people have been sent away. And we feel they have done nothing extraordinarily different to last year’s reports. We feel maybe they were swept up in what was essentially a numbers exercise in that ‘x’ number of people have to be apprehended. And there is no consideration given to the fact that they have been good people living in the United States all of these years.”
Dennehy advises green-card holders in the US to use caution before they make travel plans this summer.
“If you have anything hanging over your head – by that I mean a small legal thing, maybe you had a small criminal issue in years past, I would be cautious about going home. People coming out here from Ireland to visit for holidays should have no problems – and they should come. It’s still a great country here. We also encourage people that if they are eligible for citizenship to go for it. But that means extra scrutiny too. And now it appears that some of that scrutiny is on people travelling. So, I would have a clean slate before I travel.”
Travel for 30 minutes from Manhattan on the S line of the Subway and you will arrive at Wycoff Avenue, bordering Brooklyn and Queens, where the District Three Immigration Service sits along a street busy with local grocery stores, restaurants and beauty salons. Msgr James Kelly has been in Bushwick since he arrived in New York in 1960. At 87, he remains a bright, vital figure in the community as an immigration attorney offering advice and help to anyone who needs it. He has a small poster of the winning captains from Limerick’s four-in-a-row hurling teams on an office wall that is otherwise filled with immigration-related news clippings. His accent is as clear as though he left Adare just yesterday.
“It is a very delicate issue for me,” he says of current anxieties in the community about immigration.
“And I am very careful about what I say. I do not know what the answer is. Trump hasn’t bothered us recently. We do a lot of immigration classes. But we don’t quite know what to tell the people right now because it seems they could be removed for no reason at all. I have had a good relationship with immigration officials here. We never did phoney stuff and they know that. And they have been exceptionally kind and very fair to us.”
In Msgr Kelly’s decades here, he has seen the ethnicity of the neighbourhood move from German to Italian to Hispanic. Consequently, he speaks Italian and Spanish now as well as French and German. “And sometimes English,” he jokes. The priests in the diocese were always Irish but the Irish themselves never came to this part of the city. However, over the years, many Irish people sought his help to attain legal status in the United States and he has served on many immigration boards set up within Irish communities. He studied for a law degree in 1980 and as he became more immersed in immigration issues, he became a familiar figure in New York courthouses, representing immigrants. The service is open to anyone and charges a nominal fee.
As we speak, office manager Princess Reinoso joins us. She began helping out at the age of 12, after Kelly helped her Ecuadorean parents attain citizenship. They talk about the escalation in anxiety and general suspicion. One night, working late, they ordered food and the delivery driver requested through a message that they come across the street to collect it. He explained to them that he was uneasy when he saw “immigration” written on the mauve awning. Reinoso agrees that as well as the new fear of being apprehended, there is a “huge” tension between settled immigrants in New York and the wave of asylum seekers who arrived here under president Joe Biden’s administration.
The law has always existed. It is just that it is being more strictly enforced now
“I have people come in who are here 10, 20, 25 years and they want to know do they have a case – they have kids born here and never received anything,” she says.
“They say: I have never taken anything, never received Medicaid, how come the people who have just arrived get up in hotels in Times Square? But the law has always existed. It is just that it is being more strictly enforced now.”
She says she had not yet heard of people being approached and arrested on the street in Bushwick.
“But the ICE presentation cases, where people are asked to go to check-ups and people are turning up and getting sent to the detention centres: yes, I have heard those stories. More people are going to become fearful and self-deport.”
Msgr Kelly says many of those who visit his office are working in New York, often in construction or clothes manufacturing. He thinks that the Irish no longer dominate the construction sites of the city as they once did.
“They don’t have to come! They are doing all right at home,” he says of the Irish. “And they can go to Europe or Australia and make as much money as home. There‘s not the same pressure. It is not a question of good or bad. It is just a fact. The Irish are not coming any more. So certainly, right now the Irish are not a force to be dealt with – except in politics. But the Irish immigrant community are not the driving force in the city that they used to be.”
The new Irish blood has slowed to a trickle. But for the tens of thousands green-card holders and undocumented across the country who have made lives here, there is a new reason for caution.
“Trepidatious, yeah,” says Dan Dennehy of the mood among those who have made good lives in the city while remaining undocumented.
“This is the dilemma for people. You don’t want to avoid your appointment. And that is why we stress to people to be in tight contact with their lawyer. People know their rights. The centres are there for them. They all have relationships with people who can give them good advice. Consulates are there. There are good lawyers. Just be sensible. Keep in touch with people. Don’t live in fear and in the dark.”
