Taken at Dusk: One Irishman, a Van and a Journey 2,500 Miles From Home
When the sun was low over Boston last September, Seamus Culleton left a Home Depot car park with a few items in the back of his work van and a mind full of ordinary plans: finish the shift, go home to his wife, maybe put the kettle on. He did not know that, within minutes, his life would be hurled into a maze of handcuffs, fluorescent lights and canvas tents more than 2,400 miles (roughly 4,000 km) away.
“One minute I was listening to the radio, the next I’m surrounded,” Seamus told me in a phone call that crackled with static and restraint. “They told me to roll down the window. I did. I said I had a pending Green Card, that I was married to a citizen, that I had a work permit. It didn’t matter.”
From Boston to the Border: The Hard Geography of Detention
He was picked up on a routine errand and, by the end of a chaotic day, marched through processing in Massachusetts and shipped to a detention complex in El Paso, Texas. The transfer — a pattern repeated across the United States as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moves detainees long distances — left Seamus’s family reeling and revealed an unsettling tableau: adults who had put down roots, paid taxes, and raised hopes suddenly reduced to numbers on a manifest.
“He called me and said, ‘Tiff, I’ve been taken by ICE,’” said his wife, Tiffany Smyth, who still lives in the couple’s rented home outside Boston. “It was less than a minute on the phone. That’s all. Then silence. For a week I didn’t know if he’d been deported or if he was even alive.”
Life Inside the Tents
Seamus describes a place that bears little resemblance to the homes and workplaces he knew: rows of large, temporary tents, hard floors, metal bunks, the constant hum of fluorescent lights. “We’re crammed in. It’s noisy, there’s no real sunlight, the showers are awful, and you start counting the hours you get outside like you count days in a storm,” he said. “The food is tiny. I haven’t felt fresh air in months.”
El Paso and other border cities have seen an uptick in the use of so-called soft-sided or ‘tent’ facilities to house rising numbers of migrants and detainees. Oversight groups and local advocates have repeatedly flagged concerns about crowded conditions, limited access to legal counsel, and mental health impacts. A recent review by human rights organizations found that prolonged detention in austere settings can exacerbate trauma, especially for people who, like Seamus, are awaiting immigration determinations.
Numbers and Context
ICE’s detention footprint has changed over the years, shrinking and swelling with policy shifts and legal rulings. Still, thousands remain in the system at any given time. Advocates point out that transfers like Seamus’s — moving people far from family, lawyers and communities of record — complicate legal defense and strip detainees of the informal supports that often make the difference in long cases.
Family in Limbo
Back in County Kilkenny, Ireland, Seamus’s mother and siblings have been living on a diet of fear and unanswered questions. “My mother cries every day,” said his sister, Caroline, voice tight with the quiet fury of a sibling watching helplessly. “This was supposed to be the next chapter — a home, a family. Instead, it has been put on hold.”
Tiffany describes the logistical guerrilla warfare of trying to stay connected: tracking online portals to find where he’s been moved, booking flights for court dates only to have hearings shifted at the last minute, losing money on hotels and tickets. “I saved for months for that flight,” she said. “To get there and find the court date moved the day before — that was its own kind of cruelty.”
Voices Calling for Action
The story has rippled back across the Atlantic, where Irish politicians and diaspora groups have begun to press for clarity. “This case should trouble anyone who believes governments have an obligation to care for their citizens abroad,” said a local parliamentarian from Kilkenny. “We need answers and swift action.”
Another lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity to convey the urgency from the constituency office, told me they had contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and were urging Dublin to make direct representations to Washington on humanitarian grounds.
Legal and Human Rights Perspectives
“Long-distance transfers into hard-sided or tented detention without adequate notice undermine procedural fairness,” said an immigration attorney based in Boston. “Access to counsel is limited, and families struggle to participate in hearings when they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away.”
Human rights advocates stress that detained people — regardless of status — retain basic rights: access to sanitary conditions, meaningful medical care, and a reliable path to legal representation. “When detention conditions are described as filthy or unsafe, those are red flags,” said an independent monitor who has visited multiple facilities along the US-Mexico border. “We’re seeing patterns of prolonged confinement in environments not designed for long-term human habitation.”
What Can Be Done — And What This Means Globally
This is not merely a story about one man from Glenmore. It is a lens into global migration realities — how frontline enforcement policies can upend ordinary lives, how families are scattered by administrative decisions, and how communities are stretched between homeland kin and adopted neighborhoods.
What would you do if someone you loved was taken on the way home from work? How far would you go to be present at a hearing? And how should governments balance immigration enforcement with compassion and due process?
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Contact your representatives: Constituents can urge their elected officials to seek consular access and transparency in detention transfers.
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Support legal aid organizations: Groups assisting detainees often operate with thin budgets but provide crucial defense and advocacy.
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Ask for oversight: Independent inspections of detention facilities and timely reporting help prevent abuses and improve conditions.
Closing: A Human Life in the Balance
Seamus, who had been building a life for nearly two decades in the United States, says he dreams simply of walking back into his kitchen, putting on the kettle and hearing the familiar thump of his wife moving about the house. “I just want back what I had,” he said, voice small but steady. “I want to be a husband and father. I want a normal life again.”
Whether the machinery of diplomacy and law will answer that plea soon remains to be seen. In the meantime, his story forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: behind every policy debate are human beings — neighbors, co-workers, mothers, sons — whose lives can pivot on a single, bewildering moment.
