Deportation dragnet

Nine undocumented Irish immigrants flew out of Boston’s Logan Airport Monday night after being detained by the U.S. Border Patrol on the train while it was stopped in Buffalo, N.Y.
Another had flown out of Boston the previous Friday.
Details of the arrests, which took place on Labor Day, only became clear this week after the group, eight women and two men, agreed to accept “voluntary departure” from the U.S. at a hearing in the JFK Federal Building in Boston.
The group had been returning from the GAA North American championships in Chicago where the women had competed in camogie and the men in football.
Because of their undocumented status, the group had decided to take the train to Chicago and back. They felt that their lack of documentation would pose a problem at airports given the extra security precautions in place after Sept. 11.
As it turned out, flying might have been the better option.
The group made it to Chicago and competed in the championships. On Sunday evening, Sept. 1, the 10 boarded a train bound for Boston.
It would be a long night’s ride along the shores of the Great Lakes, but Labor Day was to have been a buffer between the journey and the return to work.
The morning would be earlier, the awakening ruder than expected.
The 10 are from all over Ireland and in talking after their arrest and appearance in the federal building in Boston, they agreed to give their first names and native counties.
Two are named Lorraine, one from Galway, the other from Kilkenny. Linda is from Donegal, Attracta from Roscommon, Sandra from Galway, Miriam from Tipperary, Maria from Waterford and Lynn from Meath. The two men are T.J. from Donegal and Dessie from Longford.
According to Lorraine from Kilkenny, the train had stopped just outside Buffalo. It was dawn, a little after 6 a.m.
“The border patrol got on the train for a random check,” she said. “We were all in the first car and when they came to us we were awakened. They asked us our nationalities and then if we had green cards.”
The piece of plastic that means all the difference in life to an immigrant was not forthcoming. The group’s members were carrying passports, all of which were checked and retained by the border patrol officers.
At this point, according to Lorraine, the conductor on the train offered to allow the officers and the group a quick exit from the train from the front car.
Instead, however, the group were told to walk backward through the train.
“It was humiliating and embarrassing,” Lorraine from Kilkenny said. “We were being escorted by officers with guns. The officers were in no way disrespectful toward us, but it was still terrifying. We were all feeling traumatized.”
At first it appeared as if the group might be detained. They were told that detention could last up to six weeks.
However, the 10 were later informed that detention was not possible. The facilities could not handle so many females. Still, they had to wait in the border patrol office for hours as paperwork relating to their detention was processed.
“We were sitting around for hours. We were starving. There was nothing to eat other than what we could get from a candy machine,” Lorraine from Kilkenny said.
“They were asking us what camogie was. They were checking on the computer to find out about it. They said they had heard of every game but not camogie,” said Linda from Donegal.
Eventually the 10, minus their passports, was taken back to the train station, which, according to Lorraine, is “in the middle of nowhere.”
The group had the option of waiting many hours from the next Boston-bound train or taking an earlier train to New York’s Penn station. They opted for New York. A friend in Boston hired a minibus and drove down to pick them up.
Back in Boston, the 10 reported to the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the JFK Building. They were accompanied by GAA officials and a representative of the Irish Immigration Center.
Again there was a delay of some hours due to paperwork and the fact that the group’s passports had not been sent from Buffalo.
The 10 had all entered the U.S. under the visa waiver program, which allows for a 90-day stay. The longest overstay in the group had been in the U.S. for five years. Several had arrived in April of this year and were only a few weeks over their allotted time.
One of the group was attempting to secure a visa to work in the U.S. as a nurse.
“We realize that we were all illegal, but we were all trying to get visas,” Linda said. “But they didn’t want to know. You really have no rights in a situation like this. You never think it is going to happen to you.”
Dan Allman, supervisory agent of the border patrol in Buffalo, said that the 10 were arrested following a routine check of passengers on the train.
“Because we’re in a border area, our agents commonly perform a check of the passengers,” he said. “We determined that the 10 individuals in question were here illegally. Most of them had entered under the visa-waiver program, which only allowed them to stay in the country for 90 days.”
Allman said the 10 were detained for about six or seven hours in Buffalo while paperwork was processed. They were then ordered in writing to report to the Boston INS office within a week.
“Because they were here under the visa -waiver program, they had no rights to a hearing to contest the deportation,” Allman said.
Paula Grenier, public affairs officer for the INS, said Monday that the 10 will be barred from the U.S. for years.
“Those who overstayed their 90 days by six months to a year will face a three-year bar while those who have overstayed by more than a year will receive a 10-year ban,” Grenier said.
However, the group said that in the hearing at the JFK Building, they had been treated as a single group and not individuals and had in fact all been hit with a 10-year ban from the U.S.
“There was no leniency,” one of them said.
Sheila Gleeson of the Irish Immigration Center said that while she was aware of a number of individual Irish being detained and deported recently, the deportation of the 10 was reverberating through the Irish community in Boston.
“I’m not aware of another group from Ireland larger than this being picked up and deported,” Gleeson said.