Between Two Shores: The Pause in an Irishman’s U.S. Deportation and the Quiet Storm It Reveals
On a cold morning in El Paso, behind the barbed wire and the hum of fluorescent lights, an Irishman named Seamus Culleton finally felt something like a breath. Not freedom — not yet — but a legal reprieve: a federal appeals court had entered a temporary order staying his deportation for ten business days. It is a small, bright hinge of time in what has been a long, wrenching sequence of custody, court dates, and family worry.
“Following a Petition for Review (PFR) of his administrative final removal order and an ex parte motion to stay Culleton’s removal filed by our firm on his behalf, the First Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, February 13, 2025, entered a temporary order staying Culleton’s removal for the next ten business days,” a spokesperson for BOS Legal Group said. “The court ordered the government to file their response which is due in the coming days.”
Those ten business days are more than calendar entries. They are a corridor to pleadings, affidavits, and strategy — and, for Seamus, a chance to challenge a final removal order that his lawyers say neglects important legal nuances. “Our focus is on reuniting him with his spouse and ensuring that justice is served within the bounds of our laws,” the firm added, while also declining to comment on personal family matters.
From Glenmore to El Paso: The geography of a life split
Seamus’s story is stitched with transatlantic threads. He arrived in the United States in March 2009 under the Visa Waiver Program, a scheme meant for short tourist stays — 90 days, no more. He remained. He labored, built a life, obtained work authorization, and, according to his lawyers, was in the final stages of obtaining a green card when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents took him into custody. He married a U.S. citizen in April 2025.
Back in Glenmore, County Kilkenny, the landscape is gentler: stone walls, low-lying fields and a pub whose name you know before you see it. “Seamus was one of ours,” said Mary O’Rourke, who runs the grocery on Main Street. “He’d be in here buying tea and telling us stories about the big country. We were shocked when we heard.”
It is a familiar pattern in many Irish towns: young people leave for opportunities and sometimes never manage the paperwork that binds a future to two places. But Seamus’s case has an extra complication — and a painful echo. Documents reveal that, as a 22-year-old in 2008, he was charged in Ireland with possession and related offences in connection with an incident in Glenmore. After failing to appear at a 2009 court sitting, a bench warrant was issued. Those charges have become, depending on who you ask, the fulcrum of his removal case.
Lawyers, judges, and the machinery of removal
Immigration attorneys say the posture of the First Circuit — issuing a short stay and asking for government response — is procedural, but meaningful. “Courts often issue temporary stays to prevent irreversible action while they consider whether an administrative order was properly entered,” said Daniel Rivera, an immigration lawyer in Boston who has handled federal appeals. “It doesn’t mean victory, but it buys time to marshal facts, medical records, marriage documentation, and legal theory.”
That time is crucial. The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that Seamus had been in the U.S. illegally for 16 years and that he had received due process during his detention. In a recent post on X, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Mr Culleton had been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in September 2025, and that he had been offered removal to Ireland but “chose to stay in ICE custody, in fact he took affirmative steps to remain in detention.”
Such statements illuminate the tension at the heart of immigration enforcement: the state’s right to enforce immigration laws versus individuals’ claims to relief through marriage, adjustment of status, and other legal pathways. The adjustment process is often labyrinthine. A person can have a marriage, a work permit, and an active petition and still find themselves facing removal if prior events — like an outstanding arrest warrant abroad — cast shadows over their admissibility.
Human faces, policy questions
Ask any community organizer who spends their days by courtroom doors and detention centers and they will tell you the same thing: behind every docket number is a human life. “We see people like Seamus all the time — caught between systems,” said Rosa Martinez, an El Paso outreach worker who visits detainees. “They’ve built families, they’ve paid taxes, they sometimes have old mistakes or paperwork lapses that blow up into immigration crises. The system was never designed for graceful exits.”
How many people are caught in that machinery? Official figures vary year to year, but tens of thousands of people are detained annually by ICE across the United States, and detention stays can range from days to many months. The human toll — family separation, delayed medical care, mounting legal bills — is harder to quantify.
In Glenmore, the conversation is quieter and more personal. “People say, ‘Why wouldn’t he go back?’” Mary O’Rourke said. “But it’s not like stepping off a bus. You create a life. You have a spouse, a job. It breaks you to be pulled away from that.”
What the next days might bring
The First Circuit’s order directed the government to file a response within days. That response could range from asking the appeals court to lift the stay and allow removal to proceed, to conceding that there are legal questions worth full consideration. Either way, the next move will likely determine whether Seamus spends more time in detention, is released on bond, or is reunited with his spouse.
There are broader implications too. Cases like this force a public reckoning with the nature of modern migration: the porousness of borders in one sense and the ironclad finality of a removal order in another. They raise questions about proportionality, rehabilitation, and the social costs of strict exclusion.
What does justice look like in a world where people live across borders? Is it a strict accounting of statutes and precedents, or does it include mercy, family ties, and the reality of lives rebuilt far from home? These are not abstract questions for the Culletons — they are the difference between dinner at home and nights under fluorescent light.
Waiting, watchful
For now, Seamus’s fate is paused, the legal clock ticking on a ten-business-day stay. His lawyers promise to continue their fight. DHS has reaffirmed its position that the removal order stands.
“We are committed to advocating for Mr Culleton’s right to remain in the United States based on the legal merits of his case,” BOS Legal Group said. “Our focus is on reuniting him with his spouse and ensuring that justice is served within the bounds of our laws.”
And in Glenmore, a village that measures time by turf fires and church bells, neighbors watch the horizon for news. “You hope for the best,” said O’Rourke. “You also know that sometimes the law moves slow and people move faster. You hold onto hope.”
What would you do if your life was threaded between two nations, and one legal order could sever the line? As this story unfolds, it asks all of us to reckon with migration not as statistics and policy but as the way people actually live — uneven, messy, and deeply rooted in both place and love.
