I have previously reported that the Trump administration’s policy of deporting undocumented immigrants includes Irish people who have overstayed their tourist Visas or have temporary status.
One Irishman who decided not to wait for possible deportation is Matthew Morrison, who took a July 21 one-way flight from Cleveland to Dublin, Ireland, with his wife, leaving behind a life he had built in the St. Louis area since 1985, including grown children, grandchildren, and many friends.
“I’ve come full circle,” Morrison told the Marshall Project, which covers the criminal justice system in Missouri. https://www.ncronline.org/news/former-irish-republican-army-soldier-self-deports-afraid-hed-die-ice-holding-cell
He told them, “I came here as an immigrant and I am leaving as an immigrant, despite everything in between. The whole thing is a crazy, stressful situation.”
Morrison was a member of the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles of the 1970s and served prison time in Northern Ireland after being convicted of attempted murder.
In 2000, the Clinton administration terminated the deportation process against Morrison and five other named “deportees,” as the group of former Irish Republican Army prisoners was called, after the American spouses of the Irish men testified before Congress. The president himself weighed in on the issue.
“While in no way approving or condoning their past criminal acts,” Bill Clinton said then, according to a Washington Post story at the time, “I believe that removing the threat of deportation for these individuals will contribute to the peace process in Northern Ireland.”
However, the Clinton administration did not give them a path to U.S. citizenship. Morrison and he other five had to live with restrictions and check in with ICE annually.
And it was that continued uncertainty that led Morrison to return to Ireland. He said that the fear and uncertainty that he might be picked up by ICE was more than he could bear.
“I would bite the dust in an ICE holding cell,” Morrison told The Marshall Project. “There is nothing to stop them from deporting me to Ecuador, South Sudan or whatever. It’s really gotten insane here. It’s crazy what they are doing now, the Trump administration. You know what I mean?”
Morrison’s wife, Sandra Riley Swift, has a house in St. Charles, Missouri, as well as her mother and many grandchildren. She said in a social media post after Morrison’s arrival in his hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, that she’s going to take turns living in both countries for a while.
For Irish citizens who do become incarcerated by ICE here in the United States, the national AOH will, as I reported in June, inform the Irish consulate and chaplains who will visit these people when they’re incarcerated.
Recently, the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami had trouble gaining access to the new detention center in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz, which opened on July 1.
The Archdiocese website says the detention center sparked controversy in the community due to its rapid construction, inadequate conditions for detainees, and location. https://www.miamiarch.org/CatholicDiocese.php?op=Article_archdiocese-of-miami-enforcement-only-is-not-the-best-policy
“It is in a fairly isolated place,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski.
Wenski joined about 25 members of the Knights of Columbus to pray the rosary outside the center’s gates on July 20 to highlight the lack of access for priests to celebrate Masses.
“We conduct religious services in prisons throughout the archdiocese,” Wenski said. He said he used to visit the Krome Immigration Detention Center in the 1980s, when it opened, and when most of the detainees were Haitians.
After several weeks of negotiations, a priest and a deacon celebrated Mass for the detainees at the detention center on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025, just over a month after it opened.
The Mass was celebrated in the cafeteria of the detention center and attended by about 150 people, most of whom were from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.
Wenski said the priest who visited the detention center reported that it went well, and the detainees were grateful and receptive to participating in the Mass.
The archbishop spoke to reporters three days after the Mass was celebrated, noting that celebrating Mass for the detainees is “very important because these people had their lives disrupted. They were working one day, and the next day they found themselves in Alligator Alcatraz, facing deportation. Going there and celebrating Mass is one way of affirming them and their humanity, of elevating their dignity and reminding them that they are not forgotten by God.”
It is also part of the Church’s mission. Wenski said, “It is a work of charity to visit prisoners. As Christ said, ‘What you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.'”
Wenski explained that many people are in danger of deportation despite having entered the country legally as beneficiaries of President Joe Biden’s humanitarian parole or as beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
The archbishop said, “We should figure out a way to extend their status here. That’s going to be a lot less costly than trying to deport people en masse. It’ll be a lot less dramatic, and it’ll be a lot more beneficial, not only to the immigrants concerned, but to the broader American society.”
