Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S crackdown on illegal and undocumented immigrants is creating ‘fear across the board’ for Irish migrants in the US, a leading lawyer has said.
Since he came into office, Donald Trump has been pouring resources into arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants as he aims to carry out the immigration purge that was promised during the presidential campaign.
Trump vowed to undertake the largest number of mass deportations in US history as president.
But while the Trump White House said deportations would prioritise immigrants with criminal records, his “border czar” Tom Homan said there would be “collateral arrests,” meaning some immigrants without criminal records could also be detained.
“The fear is across the board, and it’s not just undocumented people that are feeling afraid,” Irish immigration lawyer Fiona McEntee told The Journal.
She founded the Chicago-based McEntee Law Group, which focuses on immigration law.
McEntee noted that people who have “green cards, visas, and even naturalised US citizens” are also feeling this fear.
A naturalised US citizen is someone who was not born in the United States but has legally acquired citizenship.
A green card allows a person to live and work in the US and start the process to become a naturalised citizen – but there have been recent high-profile cases of people who hold green cards being deported for taking part in pro-Palestine protests.
“The green card is a significant milestone in immigration and it takes a lot of work to get to that point,” said McEntee.
“We would have viewed that as something that could not really be taken away, absent some very specific circumstances, such as committing a serious crime.”
There is a perception that “Irish privilege” can prevent the undocumented Irish in the US from being fearful of Trump’s deportations.
But McEntee noted that Irish people have been deported under previous administrations.
“If you’re an English-speaking white immigrant, there is a certain privilege,” said McEntee.
“There is a lot of racial profiling here and people are being targeted based on looking like an immigrant, which is just ridiculous.
“But it’s not accurate to say that Irish people have not been subject to immigration enforcement in the past.”
It’s estimated there are around 10,000 undocumented Irish immigrants across the US but exact figures are understandably difficult to come by.
Between 2022 and 2024, 158 Irish people were detained by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and 131 were removed from the US for immigration violations.
“And now, this administration seems to be trying to meet some kind of quota and they’re doing all these raids and sweeps and casting a massively wide net,” said McEntee.
There have been reports that the Trump administration is requiring at least 1,500 arrests per day by ICE, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’re a small country so we have a smaller number of people here in the US than other countries.
“Some of the [enforcement measures] we’re seeing are targeting certain groups like Venezuelan immigrants, but others are getting caught up in that as well.”
McEntee also noted the tough tone struck by Trump’s border czar, who was once an acting director of ICE.
Last year, Homan said: “As a guy who spent 34 years deporting illegal aliens, I got a message to the millions of illegal aliens… you better start packing now, because you’re going home.”
Meanwhile, McEntee noted that pathways to citizenship are complex and there is “often no place in the immigration system for them to go”.
And while working without authorisation or overstaying your welcome may be forgiven in certain circumstances, a criminal background, no matter how minor, won’t.
Meanwhile, McEntee re-iterated a warning that was issued last week to students going to the US on a J1 visa.
The Union of Students in Ireland warned of the “potential risks” of being involved in activism amid recent cases of students without US citizenship being arrested and threatened with deportation after taking part in pro-Palestine protests at universities.
“People need to be extremely careful about any type of political activism, including on social media, because this administration is taking a different stance to the Biden administration in relation to what they consider to be antisemitic and anti-American,” said McEntee.
“I appreciate the value of free speech, it’s a constitutional right here in the US, but the way we’re seeing this play out is extremely troubling and concerning.”
She added that visitors to the US should consider their social media history when going before Customs officials.
Last month, a French scientist was reportedly refused entry to the US when customs officials found WhatApp messages on his phone expressing criticism of the Trump administration.
“Customs officials don’t necessarily have to tell you exactly why you’re not getting it,” said McEntee.
“They have a huge amount of power and discretion, and they have said they’re going to start looking at people’s social media in relation to conduct that they deem to be antisemitic.
“If you’re a potential visitor to the US, they have all the cards, you don’t really have any, so it can be a tricky position to be in.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Sorry about that, I’m afraid we’re just too busy producing food and trying to make ends meet.
@Liam Dunne: Food can be produced in ways which increase biodiversity.
@Liam Dunne: You’re not the only one trying to make ends meet!!!! Who do you think pays for all the subsidies farming gets! Producers have to get a fair price for what they produce but that product has to be produced ethically and sustainably. If farming practices are damaging the very land they are supposed to be looking after and the food that they produce is full of god knows what , then it has to change. People are consuming less meat every year precisely because of the fear of what they are consuming. Thankfully there’s lots of progressive farmers and food producers around but way too few. Like turf, some of our farming practices are outdated. Change is the only way forward and that requires leadership that’s not beholden to vested interests.
Well written, yet you explain that Biodiversity is all but dead, yet you don’t explain how to remedy the causes, which you haven’t identified, are you afraid to name the main source of our now defunct Biodiversity. Organic food production in Ireland will play a small role, less than 10% ,I say talk about solutions rather than skipping around the subject.
Reading the headline it would suggest that green fields are a bad thing. Its not green fields that are killing biodiversity because most farmers do no sow grass with one type of seed. She obviously isn’t a farmer or a custodian of the land who everyday manages it and works with it. Grass seed today is blended or mixed with different varieties of seeds including different types of clover that pull nitrogen in from the atmosphere reducing the need for fertiliser. Then we have got hedgerows all over the country full of insects, birds and animals. All this absorbes carbon from the atmosphere.
The elephant is the room is tillage farming that spays many many types of insecticides and pesticides. A tillage crop is a monoculture. Only one variety is required. When you plough a field you kill insects and the diversity in that field. Then we have the issue of roundup. Now compare Ireland with all its hedgerows and grasslands to the US where you have fields of corn as far as the eye can see. 1 crop covering entire states. Could we be better 100% but are we as bad as some experts who aren’t actively farming the land of working with it, who generally live in Dublin. Of course not.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: someone else defending dirty dairying at the expense of the tillage sector which by the way is carbon neutral and if you bother to walk around a tillage farm you will find far more biodiversity than an intensive dairy or beef farm
@Tony Brady: so tell me why do we see tillage farmers spryaing roundup on the land a couple of times added with a few insecticides and pesticides. Doesn’t all those chemicals kill the biodiversity? The end result is a wheat crop and nothing else. To get the crop to grow well the farmers adds chemical fertiliser because after ploughing/tilling the soil it breaks down and nutrients are lost. Ploughing a field releases carbon into the atmosphere. People don’t realise this.
After many years of doing this the soil become tired and not very fertile. So to improve it two things can be done. You either put it back into grasslands tonlet it recover or you add organic manure which come from cows. You really don’t understand soil very well do you!!! Watch any gardening video and what’s the first thing they do? You add compost to the soil into add nutrients. You need to add it every year to grow nice vegetables. The Farmers soil is the same.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: You’re dead right about the soil and carbon storing. Globally, soil is tilled to grow crops to mostly feed, guess what? Livestock!!! resulting in the loss of half the world’s topsoil in the last 150 years!!!! It’s intensive farming that’s the problem. Dustbowls and deserts are taking over good land because of intensive farming. And you’re right too about Ireland but the trend is for bigger, more intensive farming. Fair dues to those farmers who are bucking the trend successfully. I know one family who were into cattle for generations and now still farm cattle, pigs, poultry, organically , have a farm shop, sell vegetables, have bees, sell honey and are flying!!! … Oh…don’t know what your beef (excuse the pun!) is about Dublin” Most are from the country anyway!
@Jerriko17: your right the sad truth is Teagasc are still promoting and rewarding bigger farms instead of diverse and family farms. This needs to change.
Regarding Dublin I suppose its really about those people be they lecturers, business people or politicians who predominantly live in cities and big town who have never grown a vegetable or milked a cow. Who don’t understand what it takes to produce quality food who want to shut down half the farms in Ireland and rewild it and sow trees without understanding the consequences. No farmers = no food. Who will gladly eat fruit and vegetables with a huge carbon footprint flown in from halfway around the world. These crops that do huge damage to the areas where they are grown. Produce that needs to be irragated and depleating the areas ground water causing destruction to the communities. We don’t realise how lucky we are to live is such a food rich country.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: another armchair farmer nutritions are returned to the soil through straw incorporation green manures Compast etc as regards carbon a four tonne crop of wheat will sequester up to ten tonnes of carbon with green house gas emissions of 800 kg which includes which includes emissions from fert sowing drying and transport. You mention roundup do you not know that the biggest user of roundup are local authorities and the forest service
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: another armchair farmer nutritions are returned to the soil through straw incorporation green manures Compast etc as regards carbon a four tonne crop of wheat will sequester up to ten tonnes of carbon with green house gas emissions of 800 kg which includes which includes emissions from fertiliser ,sowing drying and transport. You mention roundup do you not know that the biggest user of roundup are local authorities and the forest service
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: If we’re going to get anywhere, we really need realise we’re all in this together, urban and rural… No one side has a monopoly on wisdom and the constant ridiculing of say Eamon Ryan or the Healy Reas does no one any service. Urban and rural can’t exist without the other & sadly its the poorer farmers and those on the urban margins end up being hit the most.
@Tony Brady: Why do you think I’m an armchair farmer! Few things misleading in your comment. Firstly most of the straw in Ireland is baled and not returned to the soil. In your previous comment you said tillage farms are carbon neutral. They aren’t. A tillage crop will struggle to store carbon. Your stats don’t take into account ploughing or tilling ground can cause the loss of significant amounts of carbon (lost as CO2 bursts) immediately after tillage. The exposure of soil organic carbon to aeration during soil erosion increases CO2 emissions. This doesn’t happen in a grassland unless its ploughed. The yields that tillage farmers get is from the artificial/chemical fertilizers they spread. No fertilizers no yield. In order to keep producing crops they need more chemical fertilizers. A grassland is a carbon sink, land used in the growing of crops has a significantly lower amount of carbon stored in the soil. For example a farmer will grow potatoes in a field for 2 or 3 years and the soil is wrecked from it and will take years to recover when potatoes can be grown again. It generally put back into grass to let it recover.
Lastly this article is about biodiversity. A tillage farm produces crops grown in a monoculture. IE A field of barley. That field will possibly have been spready 5 times in a year with all sorts of chemicals to kill the biodiversity. When it comes harvest time, what chemical is often used to kill the crop before the combine comes in??? Roundup. We are eating bread from wheat that was sprayed with roundup.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: every reply you give shows your bias against and ignorance of tillage farming. Firstly all crops are not sprayed off with roundup it is too expensive. Secondly I can give you reports from the University of Finland that shows tillage farms are a net sequester of carbon the only this carbon can be returned to the atmosphere is if straw and grains are burned. Thirdly Cereal crops are sprayed for disease not bugs and if you ever sat on a combine you would see the amount of biodiversity in the crops on the windscreen and in the grain tank. Lastly stop trying to panic people most of the wheat used here for milling comes from UK and France where grain is typically harvested at 12%to 15% mousture
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: every reply you give shows your bias against and ignorance of tillage farming. Firstly all crops are not sprayed off with roundup it is too expensive. Secondly I can give you reports from the University of Finland that shows tillage farms are a net sequester of carbon the only this carbon can be returned to the atmosphere is if straw and grains are burned. Thirdly Cereal crops are sprayed for disease not bugs and if you ever sat on a combine you would see the amount of biodiversity in the crops on the windscreen and in the grain tank. Lastly stop trying to panic people most of the wheat used here for milling comes from UK and France where grain is typically harvested at 12%to 15% moisture.
@Tony Brady: again you are not talking facts. First of all I’m not against Tillage. I pro balance. We need an equal amount of livestock, cereals and crop rotation. All working together in harmony.
Your first comment you said “dirty dairying”. Listening to you, you would think growing cereals is all rosy. But its not. If we are going down the route of putting down livestock farmers then we need to be honest of the damage tillage farming does. Round up is today in Ireland used as a prior to planting and as a descassant to kill off a crop before harvest. This is a fact. It makes combining the crops easier. Its a lie to say tillage crops are sprayed for disease only. Why are there vast amounts of insecticides spayed every year? Tillage farms where land is tilled or ploughed and fertiliser spead are not carbon neutral. The carbon stored from the crop growing get released into the atmosphere… for a study to be accurate this has to be taken into account. Direct drilling is the solution but again you need to kill everything with roundup. Which is very harmful.
Lastly its also a lie to say that there is biodiversity in a tillage field of barley or wheat. Farmers are looking for a clean crop meaning all other plants are chemically killed. A monoculture is not diverse. The biggest threat to our insects species including bees are all the chemicals used in tillage farming. This is a fact and your not being honest. As for the environment grasslands are much much better and far less harmful. This is also a fact.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: as a tillage I am indeed giving you facts not someone else’s ideas so until you can give me undisputed facts of your assertions i have no interest in any further discussion with you. Enjoy the armchair and your bias interpretation of the facts
@Tony Brady: i work in the industry and have travelled the world. You can say what you like but your not being honest. If you were being honest you would be talking about regenerative agriculture working in harmony with the environment. How the tillage sector should be striving to be better reducing the use of chemicals sprays, incorporating livestock to graze crops and cover crops to fertiliser the soil.
But saying the current intensive farming system is carbon neutral and great is wrong. If people knew how much glyphosphate is in their food they would be shocked.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: you are like a broker record spouting so called facts that you have gleaned from Bias American publications. I could search the internet and get opposing views if I so wished but I am to busy trying to make a living as best I can from tillage. Funny how you have dismissed scientific results from the University of Finland which disputes your ranting regarding carbon sequestration.
Long winded Rhodes Scholars comments?
have your say