Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-10
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I first became aware it yesterday via the media. That is fine. The Department of foreign affairs became aware of the case in October and had been providing consular assistance to Seamus Culleton and his family via the teams at the consulate general in Austin, the embassy in Washington DC and our consular unit in Dublin.
We have migration law in this country. We have laws. There is legal status in Ireland and there is undocumented status in Ireland. All countries, bar none, have migration laws. We have sought, over the years, to try and regularise the undocumented in America via legislation in Congress on the Hill. Long before President Trump entered the White House, this has been a challenge. Deputy Bacik and everybody else in the House knows that. We came very close a number of years ago with the E-3 visa. At that time, we lost out by one vote on having a number of thousand visas from the Australian visa allocation allocated to Ireland. One vote stymied what would have been a significant breakthrough on that occasion. It has been extraordinarily difficult to get consensus on the Hill in respect of migration for any one specific country because Hispanics and Latinos will all want similar deals. It is either a deal for all or none, and that has been the consistent position in the US for the past decade or so. That makes it particularly difficult in terms of endeavouring to the get the Irish who are undocumented in the United States regularised. It is a very traumatic and difficult position for people to be in when it comes to their families and the many who have established homes there and so on. Families in the US are always watching over their shoulders and worried about a knock on the door or their being in a position where they would be deported.
Deportations have been going on for quite a number of years. There is a particularly intensity in the current ICE campaign. Of that, there is no doubt. The Government's position is that we will do everything we can to help Seamus Culleton, but we have to do it in a way that can really help and be effective for him. We cannot promise anything, because we do not control American migration law or practice. However, we can engage. We have engaged and we will continue to engage. We are concerned about the conditions that exist in the place where Seamus Culleton is being held, but we are also anxious for the matter to be resolved in the context of the status issue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-10