Over the past few days there has been a flurry of stories and official statements about Irish national Seamus Culleton, now detained by ICE for overstaying a visa for almost 20 years while on the run from multiple drugs warrants in Ireland. The clip of him saying his holding area is a “concentration camp” has been heard by millions, and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to turn him into a poster-boy white martyr of ICE. This is a “Look, it can even happen to white Irish” cautionary tale about the authoritarian terrors of America.
But once you actually strip out the rhetoric, the story looks rather different. It turns out that Culleton is wanted in Ireland for alleged possession of drugs, intent to distribute and ditching 25 ecstasy tablets during a police search. This wasn’t known until yesterday, but still, the story was beyond flimsy from the start.
The basic sleight of hand used in many of the initial articles, TikTok videos, and posts was the conflation of “work permit” and “work visa.” To someone who doesn’t understand US immigration law, they might think that a work “permit” functions like a work visa, granting residency rights. It does not. Sure, you might have the right to work while visiting the US. It doesn’t mean you can settle here. Similarly, a marriage does not automatically grant residency rights. Successfully overstaying for almost two decades does not grant residency rights, either.
A green card does. A valid work visa does. Hell, even a 90-day fiancée visa would have worked. Seamus had exactly none of these when he got picked up by ICE – and pending applications often do not count for much in the world of immigration bureaucracy and border enforcement.
So really, the story is: “Foreign national evading multiple drugs warrants in their home country overstays visa for a very long time before getting detained and then willfully held rather than deported, pending further decisions.” If you heard this story without him being a “white Irish” guy, would any of that sound like a martyr situation to you?
Let’s say there was a drug dealer from a small village in the middle of Haiti and the Haitian government had multiple warrants out for him, would you accept “He’s been here for 20 years” and “He found an American wife” as excuses for why he shouldn’t be deported back to his homeland where he has outstanding warrants? Does this situation pass any basic application of the categorical imperative, that is, can we universalize this rule? “If fugitives overstay their visas long enough and find a romantic partner then they shouldn’t be deported.” Just stating it out loud shows how absurd the underlying logic, or total lack thereof, is.
Would you say “Ah sure, who cares, it was 20 years ago” for rape or murder warrants? Well, there’s lots of Irish rapists and murderers who could probably accent-charm at least one American woman into marrying them, especially given a 20-year runway, so I don’t particularly want to universalize that rule either. It would leave citizenship decisions up to the loneliest women in your country.
Let’s examine some of his lawyer’s defenses in detail. “Historically and statutorily, immediate relatives of US citizens get that exemption, the fact that they overstay the visa, which is the lone charge in this case, is not an impediment for them to get the green card,” Ogor Winnie Okoye said. “Where there’s an immediate relative exception and where there’s no allegation that the person is a flight risk, a criminal of any sort, and all that, he’s just the perfect candidate to have the government exercise a favorable discretion on his behalf.”
Once you actually strip out the rhetoric, the story looks rather different
It would appear that Seamus let her stick her neck out for him. Her talking points instantly collapsed yesterday when news of the drugs warrants came out; leaning on the “no criminal record” angle has proven to have been quite imprudent, in hindsight, although her line remains that “a warrant is not a conviction”. I’ve gotten chewed out by my lawyer for withholding far lesser information before and I’m pretty sure Seamus is going to get an even worse reading of the riot act.
The core of his lawyer’s argument goes like this: he had a work permit (immaterial, you need a right to residency) and was married (also immaterial without a valid green card or visa), he was here for two decades (how does doing something illegal for longer make it better?), he doesn’t have a criminal record, not even a traffic ticket (if you ignore the multiple pending drugs warrants in Ireland.) The marriage thing would’ve worked if he had done it legally with a K-1 visa (the 90-day fiancée visa), but he didn’t do that, he overstayed a visa by two decades while having active warrants out for him in his home country.
Culleton has been complaining about his stay in immigration detention. “There’s 72 people, two TVs and they give us three meals a day” OK? What did you expect? Sounds like jail, buddy, you rode the ride, now you gotta pay for the ticket. If you don’t like it you can go back to Ireland.
Perhaps the most gratingly clichéd part of this forced martyr affair is how once again, the only time liberals will acknowledge Irish identity is when they feel like it they can weaponize against others, especially conservative Irish Americans. When I voted for Trump, I was willing to accept a lot collateral damage – and an alleged Kilkenny drug dealer who chose to not get deported and then complains about the food in his holding cell does not even begin to register as a serious moral issue to me.
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