Irish father-of-three 'is detained for three months by US ICE officials and "treated less than human" in brutal prison after overstaying his visa by three days when he was too ill to fly'

Daily Mail​

15-07-2025

An Irish father-of-three has described how he spent around 100 days behind bars in horrific conditions after being detained by United States immigration officials.
The man, named only as Thomas, says he overstayed his 90-day tourist visa by only three days when a brush with police saw him taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
The tech worker travelled from Ireland to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last autumn, and had planned to return home in October, The Guardian reports.
But when he badly tore his calf, causing severe swelling and making it difficult to walk, his doctor reportedly told him not to travel for eight to twelve weeks due to the risk of blood clots.
This took his stay under the US visa waiver programme just over the December 8 authorisation cut off, according to the report.
Thomas got paperwork from his doctor to prove his reasons for overstaying and is said to have attempted to contact both the Irish and US embassies, but did not hear back due to it being short notice.
He said he was preparing to return home when, during a hotel stay to visit his girlfriend's family in Georgia, he had a mental health episode and a row erupted between him and his girlfriend.
The police were called and he was detained, then released on bond. But rather than being allowed to walk free he was taken in by immigration officials, who saw his visa status and sent him 100 miles away to an ICE processing centre, it is reported.
He signed a form and agreed to be removed from the US and return to Ireland, his attorney reportedly said. But instead of being deported, he continued to be held by ICE.
He described harsh conditions at their facility in Folkston, GA, including only getting one hour of outdoor time a week and enduring a five-day lockdown which meant he was not allowed to contact his family.
In February, after around two months in the facility, Thomas and around 50 other detainees were moved to a holding cell.
'I thought I was finally going home,' he reportedly said, calling his family to tell them the news.
But instead he and the dozens of other ICE were transported some four hours away to a federal correctional institution in Atlanta run by the US Bureau of Prisons (BoP), he claimed.
He said the prison, which houses criminal defendants but was opened up to ICE detainees as part of the Trump administration's efforts to increase detentions.
Thomas claimed that the conditions and treatment he received at the jail were far worse than in his previous facility.
'The staff didn't know why we were there and they were treating us exactly as they would treat BoP prisoners, and they told us that,' Thomas said.
'We were treated less than human.'
He described being frequently hungry, saying the food was 'disgusting slop' made up of 'mysterious meat that at times appeared to have chunks of bones and other inedible items mixed in'.
There were inadequate clothes, he said, with the facility allegedly only giving him a used, ripped underwear and a jumpsuit and no shirt.
Each detainee was only given a single toilet paper roll a week, he claimed, and he was often cold with only a thin blanket for warmth.
Despite requiring medical visits, he said he and others never saw a doctor, and that he heard people crying for help but not getting any from staff.
He said that for some time he did not receive the psychiatric medication he requested, and that when he did staff would throw the pill under his door.
Inmates' recreation time would be in an enclosure that 'resembles an indoor cage,' he related to The Guardian, telling the newspaper: 'You couldn't see the outside whatsoever. I didn't see the sky for weeks.'
When ICE representatives would come to the facility once a week to talk to the detainees, he said, the situation was 'pandemonium', with people crowding around to try to speak and no translators for people who did not speak English or Spanish.
Thomas was unable to speak to his kids due to there being no international calls, he said, adding: 'I don't know how I made it through.'
He was moved to another ICE facility in mid-March for a brief period, he said, before finally being taken on a flight back to Ireland by two armed federal officers.
MailOnline has contacted ICE and the US government for comment on the claims.
It comes after an Irish woman was detained by ICE for 17 days, despite having a valid green card and having lived in California since the age of 12.
Cliona Ward, 54, was detained by customs officers in Seattle on March 19 because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years.
She had returned from a seven-day trip to County Cork in the southwest of Ireland after escorting her 86-year-old step-mother, Janet, to visit her ailing husband, Owen Ward, 81, who is dying of dementia.
There she was questioned regarding drug and theft related convictions, including misdemeanor charges from 2007 and 2008.
She explained to officials that the crimes had been expunged from her record and was subsequently released but told to provide proof in person at a later date.
She returned to the Customs and Border Protection office at SFO airport in San Francisco on April 21 for an 'administrative hearing', where she was detained.
Eventually, a California judge agreed to an application for the original convictions to be formally overturned at a federal level, enabling her eventual release.
ICE has this week furiously denied claims that detainees are 'starving' in detention centres.
A recent NBC News report, based on testimony from immigration advocates, claimed that detainees have had to deal with overcrowding, food shortages and spoiled food at detention centers in at least seven states.
After the outlet published the story early Monday morning, Homeland Security took to its X account and criticised the network, denying the claims in its report.
The report cited a former ICE official, who it said had told the outlet that detention facilities struggle to stay stocked up with food when new illegal migrants are brought in.
'While the agency can move money around to cover the cost of detaining more immigrants, planning for unexpected daily spikes can be difficult for facilities and could lead to food being served late or in small quantities,' the outlet reported, per the source.