“The best way I could describe it is probably like a modern-day concentration camp.”
That’s how Seamus Culleton, an Irish man who has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years, describes the ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where he’s been held since September. Here’s the kicker: Culleton has a valid work permit, is married to an American citizen, owns a plastering business near Boston, and says he doesn’t even have a parking ticket on his record. Yet he’s been locked in the same room for four and a half months.
THE DETAILS: Culleton told Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s “Liveline” show that conditions inside the facility are “absolute hell.” He described it as “a bunch of temporary tents” that each hold around a thousand detainees. He’s barely been outside—he can “count on both hands” the number of times he’s seen fresh air or sunshine.
The food situation? Three “kid-sized meals” a day with no commissary for extra food. “So everybody’s hungry, everybody’s tired,” he said. He described the facilities as “filthy”—toilets and showers “completely nasty, very rarely cleaned.”
But here’s where it gets darker: Culleton says he’s “in fear for my life.”
“People are being killed by the staff here, by the security staff, you know?” he told “Liveline.” “You don’t know if there’s going to be riots… It’s a nightmare down here.”
BUT BUT BUT: The Trump administration has insisted its immigration enforcement targets criminals and those without proper documentation. Culleton’s case throws a wrench into that narrative. He was detained on his way home from work while carrying a Massachusetts driver’s license and a valid work permit—the latter issued by the U.S. government itself as part of his ongoing green card process that began in April 2025.
His wife Tiffany got one phone call from him after his arrest. It lasted under a minute. “He told me where he had parked his work van because I had to go and pick it up,” she told RTÉ. “And then that was it, the phone hung up and I didn’t hear from him for almost a week after that.” She called the experience “traumatizing.”
WHY IT MATTERS: Culleton is now begging Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin to raise his case with President Trump during the traditional St. Patrick’s Day White House visit in March. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs says its embassy in Washington is already engaging with the Department of Homeland Security at a “senior level.”
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” Culleton told the Irish Times.
This case should terrify anyone who thought having legal status in America meant anything under this administration. A white Irish business owner with a valid work permit, married to an American, with no criminal record—and he’s describing his detention as torture in a concentration camp. If this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed: to terrorize, to punish, to disappear people regardless of their legal status. That’s not immigration enforcement. That’s authoritarianism.