Nearly 40 people have been arrested and some families separated as garda\u00ed carried out a “day of action”.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, a total of 38 men, women, and children – some as young as 13 – were arrested as they went to sign on to notify the State of their whereabouts at the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB).<\/p>\n
Some of the men are now in Cloverhill Prison, with some women in D\u00f3chas women’s prison, it is believed.<\/p>\n
Angelia Russell, a South African activist, told BreakingNews.ie that her family and friends had been caught up in the arrests.<\/p>\n
“It started with my two best friends. They went into the GNRB, just to go and present themselves. Just a routine signing to say that they’re not going to run away from their deportation order.<\/p>\n
“I hadn’t spoken to them since 25 past 10 in the morning and it should only take around 15 minutes when they go inside.<\/p>\n
“At around half 11 I realised that, okay, something had happened to them.”<\/p>\n
Russell said that her husband’s family had also been detained after that. She said that her 13-year-old cousin, together with his 23-year-old brother, had to watch their father being arrested and subsequently detained. She said that the father has “chronic high blood pressure”, and the young boy’s mental health issues – which were already very bad, have been exacerbated by the experience.<\/p>\n
“They’ve denied them medication, they’ve denied them contact with the family,” she said.<\/p>\n
She said that the father and the 23-year-old have been detained, while the mother, 25-year-old daughter, and the young boy have been sent to the Travel Lodge near Dublin Airport, awaiting deportation.<\/p>\n
Russell also described how an 80-year-old woman who “can’t even walk” went into the GNIB to register, with her son waiting outside, and “never came back out”.<\/p>\n
Russell said that “word was going around” that a deportation flight had been booked for three days time, on February 16th.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed said that 23 men and 15 women had been arrested “in advance of planned national return operations”.<\/p>\n
“An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na continues to work closely with the Department of Justice in implementing immigration policy”, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“No additional information is available at this time.”<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice said: “This is an operational matter for An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 40 people have been arrested and some families separated as garda\u00ed carried out a “day of action”.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-297352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297352","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=297352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}