An Irish tourist was held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for "roughly 100 days" because he was too ill to catch his flight back home, The Guardian reported.
The visitor, a father of three from Ireland identified as Thomas, was visiting his girlfriend in West Virginia last fall when he fell sick, the newspaper reported. He overstayed the 90 days he was allowed to be in the country under the visa waiver program by three days,
Specifically, per the report, "He had initially planned to return home in October, but badly tore his calf, suffered severe swelling and was having trouble walking."
The report stated that a doctor had ordered him not to travel due to a risk of blood clots.
He was only three days overdue to leave, had medical paperwork confirming his condition, and had proactively reached out to both the Irish and American embassies and the Department of Homeland Security to explain the situation, the Guardian reported.
But then, after he had a mental health crisis in a hotel room in Savannah, Georgia, police arrested him for "falsely imprisoning" her — though she says she never accused him of doing that.
From there, Thomas ended up in ICE custody, where for months he was swapped between multiple detention facilities with no clue what was going on or how to get out of this situation, including an ICE processing center in Folkston and the Federal Correctional Institution, Atlanta. He signed an order agreeing to deportation, but ICE continued holding him anyway.
At various points he was locked down, unable to contact his family and given only one hour of outdoor time a week. At the facility in Atlanta, he lived in freezing, filthy conditions, surrounded by pests, with limited toilet access and food full of "chunks of bones and other inedible items."
“Nobody is safe from the system if they get pulled into it,” said Thomas in an interview after he finally made it back to Ireland. He added, “The staff didn’t know why we were there and they were treating us exactly as they would treat BoP prisoners, and they told us that. We were treated less than human.”
Reports indicate that even ICE agents themselves are facing rock-bottom morale as Trump's aggressive arrest quotas force them to target widely, rather than looking for more dangerous criminal aliens like gang members.