{"id":205090,"date":"2025-12-22T12:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/205090\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T12:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:39:09","slug":"its-fabulous-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/205090\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s fabulous\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Irish grandmother who was held in a US immigration detention centre<\/a> since July has spoken of her relief after being released. <\/p>\n

Donna Hughes-Brown (58) said she was feeling \u201ca little bit overwhelmed\u201d following her release but that it was \u201cfabulous\u201d. <\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown is a green card holder and has been a permanent resident in the US since the age of 11, with a family home in Missouri. She was arrested on July 29th when she was returning to the US from a visit to Ireland.<\/p>\n

The mother of five was apprehended by a customs official at Chicago airport and transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Kentucky. <\/p>\n

Her court record showed she had signed two bad cheques, totalling less than $80, during a period of personal difficulty over a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Speaking to RT\u00c9 Radio<\/a>\u2019s Morning Ireland, Ms Hughes-Brown said she was \u201cabsolutely floored\u201d to discover over the summer that she was being detained. <\/p>\n

She said conditions in the Kentucky facility were \u201cnot ideal\u201d and it hadn\u2019t been used to having Ice detainees there. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was dirty … all kinds of bugs in the holding cell. When we first got there, they put us in a holding cell. There was faeces on the wall. They gave us mats that hadn\u2019t been cleaned,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt smelled really, really bad. That was not the worst of it. The food was horrific. I have certain food allergies … We would go without toilet paper, the showers and the sinks and the toilets would stop working, and it would take anywhere from four to five days to several weeks for them to get fixed.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown said she couldn\u2019t help thinking about \u201ceverybody else\u201d in the facility \u201cthat\u2019s still waiting, knowing that I was fortunate, but nothing\u2019s really resolved\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot more work to be done … I mean, my case is done, but there are so many folks that are facing similar situations, or even different situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish grandmother\u2019s ICE ordeal shows risks facing documented and undocumented immigrants in USOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"JimJim Brown, whose wife Donna Hughes-Brown was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stands near US secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem at a recent committee hearing in Washington. Photograph: Getty <\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown said that 13 years ago she had written a cheque to a grocery store \u201cwith the understanding that the cheque was fine\u201d. She said she subsequently found out the cheque was not honoured and returned to the grocery store and \u201cmade good on the cheque\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me that the cheque had already been given to the sheriff\u2019s office and that they would let the prosecutor know that I\u2019d come in and made good on the cheque but I still had to face the judge,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown said in 2015 she was \u201cgetting out of a bad situation\u201d and had come to find out someone had access to her account and withdrawn money unbeknown to her. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat one was for a $25 cheque for gas at a gas station. Again, these were not large amount cheques. They weren\u2019t cheques that were intended to defraud anybody,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n

The grandmother said her lowest moment was when she realised she would be in the detention facility \u201cfor a while\u201d and that she feared she might be deported. <\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown said her faith in God and the support from her family kept her going. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Irish consulate here in Atlanta was fantastic. There was just a lot of advocacy happening, and that\u2019s what got me through the lowest of the low,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Her husband Jim Brown campaigned for his wife\u2019s release during her detention, and appeared at two separate House homeland security committees on Capitol Hill, Washington.<\/p>\n

Ms Hughes-Brown said the events of recent months had taken a huge toll financially and emotionally and that she \u201cdidn\u2019t believe\u201d it when she found out she was being released. <\/p>\n

She said she planned to have a quiet Christmas with her family and would not be returning to Ireland until she becomes a US naturalised citizen. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not chancing this again,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018She\u2019s been degraded\u2019: A man\u2019s battle in Washington to free his Irish wife from Ice detentionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Irish grandmother who was held in a US immigration detention centre since July has spoken of her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39,115],"class_list":["post-205090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}