President Donald Trump has kept his promise to find undocumented immigrants via Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the impact of the directive on the Irish community of Boston increasing dramatically over the last 12 months. Irish immigrants who have become undocumented by overstaying their US visas or for other reasons are now faced with an increasingly uncertain future.
Boston’s Irish International Immigrant Center suggests that at least 17 Irish in the local area have been rounded up by ICE, the majority of whom had stayed in and around the area after their 90-day holiday US visas had expired. Across the US, an ever-increasing number of Irish undocumented immigrants have been seized by ICE during the last three months.
In the bigger picture, 33,366 more arrests have been made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement than was the case the previous year, an increase of as much as 30 percent, in the 11 months since the executive order to round up undocumented immigrants was signed by the President.
ICE and the Trump administration have not released the full numbers of Irish immigrants who have been swept up. This has brought speculation that the White House is trying to avoid angering older Irish-Americans who may support cracking down on illegal immigration in general but not when it involves their fellow Irish.
The Irish Ambassador to the US, Anne Anderson, said, one week after Trump’s victory in the US election, that many Irish undocumented were now living in fear.