Irishman Seamus Culleton, who is being held in a detention camp in Texas pending deportation, had a warrant issued for his arrest by an Irish court soon after he entered the US as a tourist in 2009.
The District Court in New Ross, Co Wexford, issued the warrant in April 2009 in respect of Culleton, of Kilbride, Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, over the alleged possession of drugs, and possession of drugs for sale or supply, at Ballyverneen, Glenmore, in May 2008.
He was also facing charges of allegedly obstructing a garda during a search by throwing 25 ecstasy tablets on the ground.
A further warrant was issued by the same court in September 2009, in relation to an alleged criminal damage charge from September 2007 at Weatherstown, Glenmore.
READ MORE
The warrants remain in existence and Culleton has not since come to the attention of An Garda Síochána.
He entered the US in March 2009 as a tourist under the visa waiver programme but remained there after the permitted 90 days. He got married in April 2025 to US citizen Tiffany Smith. He had applied for a green card, which functions as a permanent residency and work permit, on the basis of his marriage when he was picked up by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Massachusetts in September and transferred to a detention facility in El Paso, Texas.
Asked about the District Court warrants on Wednesday, Culleton’s sister, Caroline, referred the matter to his US attorney, Ogor Winnie Okoye, in Massachusetts.
However, during an online video press conference on Wednesday, Okoye said she was only just hearing about warrants having allegedly been issued in Ireland for Culleton’s arrest in 2009.
[ Ice detention camp, where Irishman is held, under scrutiny for unexplained deathsOpens in new window ]
“I can’t speak to a warrant,” she said. The alleged warrants appeared to have been issued subsequent to his move to the US in March 2009, she said.
Her client “will not be aware of any warrants after he came to the US,” she said. A warrant was not a conviction, she added.
Okoye declined a request to disclose her client’s date of birth but did confirm he was 38 years old.
On Thursday, the assistant secretary of the US homeland security department, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed Culleton’s date of birth to The Irish Times. It is the same as that of the man against whom the bench warrants were issued.
Culleton brought an unsuccessful habeas corpus application in a court in El Paso with the judge basing her decision last month on the fact that he had come to the US on a visa waiver programme under which participants waived their right to contest deportation.
[ Ice and the Irish: the legal situation for people who entered on visa waiversOpens in new window ]
The waiver of rights included cases where a person who had overstayed their visit had since married a US citizen, the judge ruled.
In a phone interview with The Irish Times last week, Culleton described conditions in the Texas detention facility as “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.
Since the publication of the original report in The Irish Times, Culleton’s case has received widespread coverage in Ireland, the US, the UK and further afield, with politicians calling on the Government to raise his case with the US authorities and the White House.
In a social media post on Tuesday, McLaughlin said Culleton entered the United States in 2009 “under the visa waiver program, which allows you to stay in the US for 90 days without a visa. He failed to depart the US.
“He received full due process and was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on September 10th 2025.”
He was offered the choice to be instantly deported to Ireland but instead “chose to stay in Ice custody,” she said, in an apparent reference to Culleton’s efforts to contest his deportation.
On Wednesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Government would do everything it can to help Culleton.
