Valid papers, no crime, indefinite detention: ICE’s American promise
This for-profit system of immigrant incarceration needs more fodder, and this is not the only person disappeared into it.
An Irish man with a valid U.S. work permit has been held in ICE detention since September 2025. He has no history of violent crime and no problems with his paperwork. DHS offers no clear explanation for why this man has been confined for months.
Originally from Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, Seamus Culleton is married to a US citizen and owns a plastering business in the Boston area. He was arrested on September 9th, 2025, and has been in an Ice detention facility in Texas for nearly five months, despite having no criminal record, “not even a parking ticket”. In a phone interview from the facility, he said conditions there are “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.
Culleton said he was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit issued by the US government when he was pulled over by Ice on the way home from work in September. His work permit was issued as part of an application for a green card which he initiated in April 2025. He has a final interview remaining.
Over five months, disappeared into a system accountable to no one, for the crime of simply existing. Culleton reports inhumane conditions and a terrifying story of what can happen because someone, somewhere, decided to hold him hostage.
This for-profit system of immigrant incarceration needs more fodder, and this is not the only person disappeared into it.