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.
AN IMMIGRATION OPERATION designed to catch people illegally staying in Ireland resulted in eight people being deported.
A garda checkpoint was put in place in Dundalk, Louth, near the border with the North where documents of those suspected of being here illegally were checked. The operation was carried out last week.
The eight people had travelled from Britain to Northern Ireland and were attempting to come to the Republic.
Gardai confirmed that the incident took place and said the eight people had been repatriated to their country of origin.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
One has to wonder if eight were caught in one day at this checkpoint, just how many are coming in illegally when there are no checkpoints?
You sound like trump…..’Swamped’…. Complete exaggeration….Some of our new Irish, work FOR the betterment of local communities and also work In our public services.
@Mary Scanlon: Rather than getting triggered by words that sound like the boogeyman maybe you could acknowledge that there are also real problems in and abuses of our immigration system. Do you recognize that our immigration policies have costs as well as benefits?
@Mary Scanlon: New Irish? Are we natives ‘old Irish?’ Absurd term. If I move to China, do I become ‘new Chinese?’
@winston smith: Ireland First? is it?
You’re being melodramatic… and just plain wrong.
@Daniel Mac Brádaigh: What would you prefer? Humanity first? How would you go about putting all 7.4 billion people on this planet first? Who would come second? Or are we in some fantasy world where they are no conflicts of interest whatsoever amongst those 7.4 billion people and so the representatives elected to govern any given state will never have to choose between the interests of the entire planet and the interests of the people who elected them?
New Irish?? Are you on the spectrum or something?
@Daniel Mac Brádaigh: Yes, the Irish people absolutely should come first in their own homeland. Do you think otherwise? Irish last?
How exactly is he plain wrong?? Would you care to back that up with even the slightest argument? Also melodramatic? Who uses that term like..are you a TY student or in an episode of Dawsons Creek? A**h**e
Wow people actually being deported.
@Eóghain Pádraig MacEochagáin:
4,000 to be deported or refused entry to Ireland in 2016; highest number in 6 years
In the past Ireland’s Immigration System WAS weak… but that is NOT the story today. Our immigration system is now tough, actually too tough and only people who have experience of it can tell you the truth.
@Eóghain Pádraig MacEochagáin: Only as far as back over the border from Louth to the North! One of the easiest deportations ever which of course skews the statistics. It’s not like they’re going to insist on lodging an appeal. They’ll just cross again in future at a quieter border crossing or on a day that the Gardai aren’t out.
@James Maloney: Our immigration policies are weak. Implementation of those weak policies has improved but that doesn’t resolve the underlying policy problem.
@John Bennett: Yes the UK is cracking down a bit in response to Brexit. It doesn’t say that they were handed over to the PSNI though and I don’t think they would be. As far as the Gardai are concerned the immigration offence they committed was committed here in Ireland and the sanction is simply deportation.
The Gardai can’t determine that any offence was committed under UK immigration laws because that’s not their jurisdiction. The UK is their country of origin so they just get returned there. Like someone being deported from here back to Nigeria. They aren’t handed over by Irish officials from the plane to Nigerian police because they haven’t committed any offence under Nigerian law as far as we can know.
@John Bennett: if you read the article it states the eight people were repatriated to their own country.
@Brianán B McBride: It says ‘country of origin’. The journal is not the best at journalism:
“Eight foreign nationals were returned to the UK as they were in breach of immigration offences,” a garda spokesperson said.
It is understood several different nationalities were involved and that they had made their way across the border having travelled from Britain to Northern Ireland.”
https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0211/851869-garda-immigration-louth/
I’m pretty sure that returned to the UK doesn’t mean handed over to the custody of the PSNI. The PSNI would need an arrest warrant for each individual to allow the Gardai to do that.
@Eóghain Pádraig MacEochagáin: I didn`t know it was possible to be deported from this country,surely there must be some government quango or amnesty international or do gooders in the media who can intervene and get this stopped, harassing these people is appalling.
I thought country of origin meant place were the person was born, no doubt it is costly to deport people so good if they were handed over to NI immigration officials. More info needed in article.
@Brianán Mc Bride: In some contexts it does and the resulting confusion is probably not accidental.
It’s possible that NI immigration officials took custody of them but it’s extremely unlikely. The Guards can’t hand people over to the police force of another state without an international arrest warrant.
But the real giveaway is that none of those affected appealed their deportation order which is why this didn’t end up before the courts. If they were being handed over to the PSNI, who would hand them back to the London Met police or whoever, who would deport them to Pakistan, there would have been legal aid lawyers and appeals here. If it looks too easy it probably is.
This press release was probably deliberately worded by the Garda press office to give the impression that these are real, effective, deportations. And to counterbalance the whole whistleblower business. These days most branches of the state are more concerned with manipulating statistics and good PR than they are with reality.
@John Bennett: Well, they weren’t arrested at the border and the north-south border is no more a real border these days than Schengen area ones as between France and Germany. It was a general checkpoint near the border. And returned to the north doesn’t mean released by the Guards just over the border. It could mean put on a bus back to Belfast. We can’t know for certain but if they were handed over to the custody of the PSNI I think that would have been reported.
They were very quick and deporting them. So how come it takes years and years to make a decision about the people in the likes of Mosney and other centres around the country.
One is a refugee and one is an illegal immigrant. Refugees are coming from countries where they fear for their life and are seeking refuge from persecution and the illegal immigrant should not enter the country in the manner they are on my understanding Mick
@brian boru: Dont most “refugees” arrive in a country as an illegal immigrants and then apply for refugees status?
@brian boru: Except that the vast majority of those who claim asylum are not refugees but bogus asylum seekers chancing their arm. Over 90% of asylum applications are bogus.
“A small but well placed minority of commentators have sought to create the impression that Ireland’s treatment of asylum seekers is harsh and unfair. They have consistently concealed the real facts from the Irish people. Moreover, they have sought to create the impression that anyone who points out the true situation is engaging in political racism. They hint at international comparisons which do not exist.
They refuse to address the very large abuse of asylum protection in Ireland. They claim to believe that it is wrong to point out what is happening lest it create prejudice against genuine asylum seekers. They are engaging in a form of verbal intimidation of those who would tell the truth.”
“Dealing fairly but efficiently with the large number of unfounded asylum claims which are being received which represent over 90% of the total asylum applications being processed annually.”
@Mickmac the reason is it’s making millions for the owners of Mosney and such places and of course our legal eagles
@Sean O’Connor: Excuse me if I do not take what Michael McDowell said in 2005 as a true reflection of what the situation was and is now. We have an appalling record when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers, especially children.
‘There remained concern at the length of asylum proceedings, which in some cases took three to five years. Legislation proposed in 2008 to introduce a single procedure for determining refugee status as well as other forms of protection was not enacted.
In November, the Ombudsman for Children found that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children received a lower standard of care than children in the mainstream care system, and that many resided in uninspected private hostels. She expressed concern that 419 unaccompanied children had gone missing from care between the end of 2000 and June 2009 and was critical of the response to such incidents. She also concluded that the asylum process did not take sufficient account of children’s age or vulnerability.’
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/europe/Ireland
‘A State watchdog has expressed “grave concern” over the volume of welfare or abuse issues relating to asylum-seeking children living in State-funded direct provision centres.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found young people in these settings were almost nine times more likely to be the subject of a referral relating to child welfare or safety issues than children in the wider community.
Among the welfare concerns highlighted were mental health problems among parents and children; a lack of clothes and toys; parents isolating themselves from support services.
Child protection concerns included concerns over physical abuse; older children left to care for younger children; and inappropriate contact by adults towards some children.
About 1,600 children are living in direct provision accommodation centres, many of whom have spent years living in these settings.
The report identified significant delays in the response from child protection and welfare services to concerns.
In one instance, it took three years for a response from the Child and Family Agency to a concern over a child who had threatened suicide.
In the Louth/Meath area, for example, most children were not met with or seen by social workers even though records indicated concerns over their safety and welfare.
In one of these cases, there were significant concerns about an allegation of physical abuse of two children and the case was closed without children being visited.’
@Bobby wilson: Some of them will be. That’s just statistically inevitable. And we have integration problems just like everyone else does with Islam. This guy died fighting with ‘rebels’ in Syria in 2013:
“A Libyan-born man who grew up in Ireland has been killed in Syria, bringing to four the number of people with Irish links who have died after joining rebel forces battling President Bashar al-Assad.
It is understood Mr Habbash was shot dead during fighting between rebels and regime forces near the northeastern town of Raqqa.
Mr Habbash is the fourth person with links to Ireland to die after joining rebels in Syria.
In late April, Jordanian-born Alaa Ciymeh (26), who grew up in Dublin, was killed. In February Libyan-born Shamseddin Gaidan (16) from Navan was killed after he went to Syria without his parents’ permission. Egyptian-born Hudhaifa ElSayed (22), from Drogheda, was shot dead by regime forces in northern Syria in December. He had travelled to Syria as part of Liwa al-Umma, a rebel brigade founded by a Libyan-Irish man named Mehdi al-Harati, who also commanded a unit during the Libyan revolution.
Up to 20 men from Ireland are estimated to have joined rebel forces in Syria”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/fourth-person-with-irish-link-dies-in-syria-1.1440030
@brian boru: We need to start distinguishing between people who have applied for asylum and refugee status and those who have been granted it. People do not become refugees just because they say they are refugees. The ones arrested in Louth could have claimed asylum and then their claim would have to have been processed and they’d be living in Mosney, lodging appeals etc. They chose not to do that because it’s easier to just go back and cross again tomorrow.
@Marlowemallow: Christ, 4 killed? Estimated 20 jihadis? Jeez, these numbers are HUGE . . . They’ll easily take over the country when they come back . . . Quick, build a wall NOW.
Poor snowflake.
@Darren Gray: You’re saying that because Ireland doesn’t provide adequate child protection to children of asylum seekers, McDowell must have been lying about the percentage of asylum applications that are rejected as unfounded. Do you get how illogical that is at all?
@Marlowemallow: I was merely pointing out that we have an appalling record when it comes to protecting people seeking asylum. It also looks like McDowell was ahead of his time when he accused the media of publishing ‘fake news’ in relation to the treatment of those seeking asylum.
Do you find it illogical that Irish people are complaining about migration, economic on not, when millions of people have left these shores in search of a ‘better life’? Do you find it illogical that Irish people are fearful of immigrants when our own people faced the same prejudicial treatment when we crossed the Atlantic Ocean or Irish sea? Do you find it illogical that people with you mind-set blame immigration for economic and social problems, when the root of most of our problems is our dogmatic adherence to a broken economic model?
I suppose IGNORANT would be a better word to use than ILLOGICAL !!!!
@Darren Gray: We also have an appalling record when it comes to protecting Irish children from abuse, leaving them in pain waiting for surgeries, silencing whistleblowers etc. You weren’t ‘merely’ pointing anything out. You were making a link between that failure and the concrete statistic that Sean posted about the refusal rate for asylum applications. Now you’re trying to duck out of it.
What I find amusing is people inventing caricatures of people who disagree with them about immigration and then shouting at those products of their own imagination. Ignorant and illogical would be a polite way of describing that bad habit.
@Darren Gray: Completely untrue
“The median processing time for asylum applications in 2014 (to end April) is 12.1 weeks.”
“The median processing time to a final decision by the Minister on an asylum application in 2013 to include the appeals process in the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) was 36 weeks.”
The reason that people are in Direct Provision for so long, is because they appeal each and every refusal in an attempt to exhaust the system.
Genuine asylum applicants(less than 10% of applicants) don’t spend that much time in direct provision centres. Once they’re given refugee status, subsidiary protection or humanitarian leave to remain then they are entitled to work and social welfare support just like any Irish citizen. After 36 months residence, they’re entitled to apply for naturalisation and the fees are waived.
There are no Syrians in direct provision, for example.
Apart from 98 people, those in direct provision are either from Pakistan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Dr Congo, Albania, Malawi, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, South Africa or Algeria. (Page 17)
http://www.ria.gov.ie/en/RIA/RMR2016April.pdf/Files/RMR2016April.pdf
@Darren Gray: The only thing appalling about our asylum system, is that we don’t deport over 90% of the bogus applicants. The reason as to why so many remain in direct provision, is because they appeal each and every refusal in an attempt to exhaust the system.
Give them one appeal and then a swift deportation.
@Darren Gray: As for us treating migrant “children” appallingly, spare me. Huge numbers of them are grown adults masquerading as unaccompanied minors as they know that there’s little chance of them being deported.
According to a new report from Tusla, Ireland’s child and family agency, migrants are pretending to be children to find refuge in Ireland.
The first intake of migrant children from Calais arrived in Britain this week and there was speculation across some media outlets that several were much older than they said, reports TheJournal.ie.
Fred McBride, chief executive of Tulsa said that verifying the ages of unaccompanied migrants will be an issue here too.
‘Some of them are not children, they’re actually adults pretending to be children. So, actually getting verification of their age is a challenge and some will flee immediately on landing at the port or airport.’
http://evoke.ie/news/irish-news/migrants-pretending-to-be-children-ireland
I see Peter Murray’s comment about the reason why many people are in direct provision for a long time has been deleted. Nice censorship journal. I’ll post it again in a form you probably can’t delete:
Many people who are in direct provision centres for a long period of time are there for that duration because they are appealing their refused application for asylum. Most of them will lose all of those appeals because their claims are in fact unfounded.
Why they have to go the border ? Dublin is swamped with illegal immigrants… 8 in one day !! You’d catch 800 in one hour passing through Temple Bar .
@Joe Dixon: . Because those ones would object to being deported and wouldn’t produce nice statistical results for deportation numbers. They’d go into the appeals system.
Time to rip up the Maastricht treaty and close our borders. We have over 40 thousand illegal immigrants in this country. The Garda don’t need to be setting up elaborate checkpoints just to catch a few, just walk our streets and there you will find them.
@Sam: Ah yea, let’s shut down free movement of citizens, tourists and trade goods so the problem of having 0.8% of our population being illegal is tackled. You running for government? Only a politician would try to solve a problem like that.
About time too.
Thousands of illegals have used this route over the years ,lately its mostly visas over stayers from Pakistan.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/young-pakistani-men-flee-uk-and-flood-into-ireland-31248564.html
Time for AAA to assemble a protest, so they can extract “donations” from the crowd
Or the AA
Yeah deported across the border free to try again on the next bus or train
@johnp: Exactly. This is a PR exercise.
It’s funny how the same people on this site lauding this move are the same ones kicking off about Trump trying to do the same thing. Hypocrites is the word.
This will give you an idea of the amount
http://www.courts.ie/courts.ie/library3.nsf/(GlobalSearch)?Openagent&SearchTerm=pakistan&Scope=GLOBAL&l=en&id=908
type in any country you like
An absolute racket , we really are being taken for a ride
Eight people caught, how much did it cost, funny how we deport people a couple of weeks before Enda meets Donald
What cost would you consider ok? Funnily, there were 3450 deportations in 2015 and estimates of up to 4000 for 2016. Was this to keep Obama happy or was it prescience of the US election result?
The cost is enormous from 2005 to 2009 we spent 2.7 Billion on asylum seekers,I cannot find figures from then until now but going on the last figures it would be around another 4 to 6 Billion
Lots of money for social housing .
Immigrants who are convicted in a court should automatically be deported.
@Tony Hartigan: You have to start with a general rule of not accepting immigrants from states that don’t accept deportees. Lots of countries don’t cooperate with deportations because they don’t particularly want their adventurers back.
@Tony Hartigan: So anyone should be able to come here and commit any crime they want and when they’re caught they just get sent home? What does the sentence read like? “Mr Smith you have been convicted of rape, robbery and murder. It is the sentence of this court that you be sent back to Sydney with a note for your mammy”
@Francis Devenney: They should be deported upon completion of their prison sentence. Straight from prison to the airport.
Build a wall, build a wall, build a wall.
Pity we couldn’t deport Kenny.
Is there a quota on how many student visas that can be issued in a calendar year? Or is just a matter of getting g some Micky mouse English school to stamp your “student” visa request? How many people from Brazil Pakistan China Japan and Korea have arrived in dublin with these visas? Are there figures as it seems Dublin is like a bursting concert and the government keep letting people in.
Isn’t racist to deport people ?
@Stephen Hynes: Illegal immigrants? It most certainly is NOT racist to deport them.
@Stephen Hynes: only when #trump does it , when we do it it’s protecting our borders.
@Stephen Hynes: It depends why you’re deporting them, most of the illegals in the west of Ireland are white Americans and Aussies if they are getting deported at the same rate as non whites then fair enough, if not then it needs looking at.
@Niamh Leahy: Trump and his supporters were giving out about Obama not “protecting the borders,” during the election campaign,but then when it was all over,they started giving out about him deporting in record numbers. #gas
I know that it is quite hard to get visas for Ireland from certain countries, whereas the UK has historical ties and is much easier to get visas for. Family members of those who often legally reside here bring their family in through the north, hence checkpoints in Louth. Still find it funny how we distinguish between illegal immigrants and the undocumented in our media and by our government.
They are alleged to be illegal entering Ireland but maybe not the UK. Who knows they new be from the the likes of Jamaica or India and many not need a visa. There checkpoints are nothing more than two Garda stopping a BUS Eireann or Ulster bus , board it and ask some for their visas. They could also be back packers who didn’t have the right paperwork.
@Derek McDonnell: And maybe the moon is made of cheese.
“The number of asylum claims is set to almost treble by the end of the year, with applications from Pakistani and Bangladesh nationals accounting for most of the increase.
Claims by Pakistani nationals have increased eightfold so far this year, while claims from Bangladeshis are up almost fourfold.
People from the two nations now account for 54 per cent of all asylum claims being made in the Republic, compared with just 19 per cent of claims last year.
According to the Department of Justice, applications from those nations are increasing much faster than from other countries because the Irish system is being used by young men on student visas in the UK to prolong their stays in Europe.
A department review found that most of those from Pakistan and Bangladesh claiming asylum here had travelled from England to Scotland and then taken a car ferry to Northern Ireland. They then travel to the Republic and lodge their asylum claims.”
If we don’t call a halt to this racket we will soon end up like Britain , 50% of Pakistani men and 75 % of Pakistani women are unemployed , 25% of Pakistani men who are employed are taxi drivers , on top of that we have bogus weddings here and then we can look forward to beards , veils , burkas , underage marriage , honour killings , sharia patrols and courts , the British have allowed Sharia Courts for gods sake , its way past time we called a halt to this
How about all the East Europeans that come here to scrounge on the welfare for years with no intention of working
@Kevin Moylan: Within the EU, we can bring in the rules that Belgium has. People from the new EU states can come for three months. Then they need to register with the local council or whoever and show that they have the financial means to support themselves (i.e. a tax paying job, savings, family member who will maintain them etc) and health insurance (because our public system can’t cope with our population as it is). It’s perfectly reasonable given the gap in living standards between the richer and poorer EU countries. No mainstream political party will do that though.
Great news!!!
We’re going to build a wall and make Ireland great again!!!
yet we demand enda to get trump to let Our illegal aliens sorry undocumented irish stay in America.
@the truth: Nobody does two-faced like the Irish . . . Better that it should go back to being an isolated inbred backwater, than be the vibrant modern society it is today, because it seems fairly clear that that’s what most commenters here would prefer anyway.
@neil get the foreigners out more social welfare for our own scroungers.
Send in the “Trumps”.
Now, if they could turn their attention to the Eastern European invasion, that would be something.
Ah! The Chinese..A great bunch of Lads!
Can we build a wall alone the NI border , I know some good brickies made for the price work , lol
Can we send Gerry back too?
Is nobody here aware of irish history?? I honestly have no idea how Irish people can be racist and have a fear of immigrants. You’re kidding me right? Just think back, just a little even! Irish complaining about immigrants? Are you f#@king serious? Think about it! Why is nobody learning from history? Recent and well recorded history… oh yeah we never had irish terrorists or masses of our population emigrating.. *cough* The IRA! The 80s! For f@#k sake you better all be f@#king trolls! Sick of the racist bs on this site.
@chiara mullally: Cursing and swearing and name-calling isn’t very effective in fighting racism is it? Could it be that your goal is not to fight racism but rather to curse and swear and call people names?
I’m just a sweary person..guess I could cut down on the casual cursing? Are you not a troll? Hang on, I’ll try make my point again, but I’ll keep it PG13 for you. I find it astounding, that the human race as a whole, refuses to learn from history. I use to wonder how in gods name did someone like hitler ever get support. I now can see how it happens but I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how masses of people can write off masses of others. In particular our history, involves a lot of mass emigration. We should have an understanding and compassion for others who have to leave their homes. Our history also involves a fair amount of terrorism. Now, I’d be pretty pissed if I had to leave this country because there’s no jobs here, and upon my arrival in america/australia/uk, if people presumed I was there to claim benefits and bomb the place because I’m irish and not a local.
@chiara mullally: You’re comparing immigration into vastly uninhabited new world, continent sized countries with resources to boot and we’re newcomers didn’t get a red cent in welfare, to immigration into a tiny island off of the atlantic that is currently experiencing a social housing crisis, suffering from high unemployment and where essential services are being cut to the bone.
You realise this is an absurd comparison to make, right?
@chiara mullally: You wouldn’t get benefits unless you’re a citizen in Australia and America. Plus you’d need a work visa to stay for longer than a holiday.
Only 2.4% of Irish people resident in Australia are unemployed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/17/ireland-australia-land-of-plenty
Only 38% of Africans resident in Ireland are employed.
http://emn.ie/index.jsp?p=100&n=105&a=269
Compare and contrast. They take border controls seriously. We don’t.
Are actually trying to write off the past 200 hundred years of irish history, claiming it to have no relevance today? And in the 80s, the 1980s, I don’t think the irish were leaving to an uninhabited new land, like what are you on about?
@chiara mullally: The problems you’re having in understanding why other people disagree with you are not caused by your superior knowledge of history. They’re caused by your ideologically motivated and selective understanding of history.
@chiara mullally: Yes, as you’re comparing apples and oranges. As I’ve already explained to you. The past is foreign country and immigration procedures of 150 years have little relevance today.
The new world countries let in the Irish as they needed cannon fodder and cheap labour. Not for humanitarian reasons and they didn’t give them a lick in welfare.
Do you think we should base our immigration policies on what happened in the mid 19th century or something?
Most public transport is stopped everyday crossing the border at Louth but the one last week stopped all vehicles by diverting them off the motorway. If the correct visa is not in place they are taken to Dundalk , photographed, finger printed and then taken to the bus station and returned to Newry. some taxi companies in Newry are refusing to take ‘some’ people across the border. But then again there are at least 10 border crossings in that area within 5 miles of the regular checkpoint and private cars are seldom, if ever stopped. I have seen people refused entry into the state on the way to the airport as they do not have the correct visa even though they are ‘Supposed’ to be leaving the country.
This is a daily occurrence but did manage to save over 2 million a few years ago in people claiming both sides of the border.
Donald trump is doing the right .
have your say