Donna Hughes-Brown, the Irish-born grandmother who has been detained in an Ice detention centre in the US state of Kentucky since July, is to have her deportation hearing at the facility on Wednesday.
Ms Hughes-Brown, a Missouri resident whose husband, Jim Brown, is a US navy veteran, has been in detention since arriving at O’Hare airport in Chicago in late July following a family trip to Ireland.
Her detention is related to a misdemeanour involving a cheque to the value of $25 a decade ago.
Although Ms Hughes-Brown has lived in the US for 47 years, moving there with her family as a child, and is a green card holder, she is not a US citizen.
RM Block
She was detained under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was amended on July 4th as part of President Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ initiative.
It now stipulates that any foreign-born resident of the US who has committed any violation over the previous two decades can be barred from re-entry into the country. It came into effect on July 24th, by which time the couple had already left for Ireland.
Mr Brown will watch the hearing via video link on Wednesday and has previously described the ordeal as an ongoing “crisis” for the family.
It is hoped that numerous testimonies to Ms Hughes-Brown’s community-oriented charity work and involvement in numerous civic projects, as well as the minor nature of the decade-old misdemeanour, will lead to the case being struck out.
Her hearing had been scheduled for September 17th but was delayed until this week.
The 58-year-old has been held in the Kentucky facility for almost three months, living in conditions described as challenging.
The case has drawn comparison to that of Cliona Ward, an Irish green card holder who was detained at San Francisco airport when she returned from a visit to Ireland. Her detention related to offences dating back 20 years which had been expunged from her state record but remained on the federal record. She was released in May.
If Ms Hughes-Brown’s appeal hearing is unsuccessful, she faces deportation to Ireland after having lived in the US since 1977.
