An Irishman named Seamus Culleton, who is awaiting deportation, has become the latest poster boy for anti-ICE propaganda. But like all the other corporate media sob stories, the sympathetic coverage of Culleton belies a history of law-breaking and an overall sordid past.
The breathless coverage began early this month when several media outlets picked up on the fact that Culleton has been detained by ICE since September 2025. CNN reported that Culleton “fears for his life and is confined in appalling conditions.” Culleton did “everything the right way” his current wife claims, in a quote dutifully reported by NBC News. He has a “valid US work permit,” The Guardian reported. He also “runs a plastering business in the Boston area.”
Culleton for his part has been happy to play to the corporate media, describing the detention center as a “concentration camp” and “absolute hell.” He claims he never committed a single crime – “not even a parking ticket,” the Irish Times reported. (Never mind that he overstayed his visa by approximately 5,000 days, which is worse than a parking ticket.)
Open-borders libertarians were also glad to trumpet Culleton’s cause. Reason editor Nick Gillespie called the situation “appalling” and suggested that the deportee’s alleged rights to due process were being abused. The same magazine also repeated Culleton’s words that the detention center is “torture,” while describing him as a “Boston man.”
“[A]bsolute torture, a psychological torture, physical torture,” he told another news outlet, as quoted by Reason. “I just want to get back to my wife. We’re so desperate to start a family.”
The reporter then added her own opinion at the end of the story: “Rather than arresting and deporting the ‘worst of the worst,’ the Trump administration has arrested and removed immigrants like Culleton who have no criminal record and who have lived and worked in the U.S. peacefully for years.” (In fact, around 70 percent of deported individuals have criminal charges in addition to entering the country illegally.)
The only problem with the supposedly heartbreaking story of Seamus Culleton, the Irish business owner with no criminal past who just wants to live peacefully and start a family? None of it is true.
Culleton entered the country in 2009 under an incredibly generous program between the United States and Ireland. The rule allows for workers to come to the United States for 90 days without obtaining a visa, as long as they return home for at least 90 days.
However, participants in the Visa Waiver Program waive their right to a hearing and can be deported at any time, as an immigration attorney explained to CBS News last year in an article about Irish illegal aliens. They regularly abuse the program due to its lax rules, the attorney admitted, saying “most of them…overstay.”
Culleton is also not being held in the detention center against his own will. Rather, he is choosing to stay there instead of returning to Ireland, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“He failed to depart the U.S.,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X. “He received full due process and was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on September 10, 2025.” McLaughlin added that Culleton took “affirmative steps to remain in detention” instead of returning to Ireland.
In other words, Culleton is voluntarily choosing to stay in a place that he described as “absolute torture.”
But why exactly Culleton is so reluctant to return to the Emerald Isle became apparent in recent days – namely, because he’s hardly the innocent victim that the media has made him out to be. As The Guardian was forced to admit, Irish law enforcement issued an arrest warrant for Culleton soon after he fled to America, ostensibly just looking for a better opportunity to work for three months.
Culleton is charged with “the alleged possession of drugs for sale or supply” and “faced charges of allegedly obstructing …a police officer.” In an apparent attempt to escape prosecution, he reportedly threw “25 ecstasy tablets on the ground,” during a search.
His attorney, who described him as the “perfect candidate” to stay in America, said she had no idea about the criminal charges.
Additionally, while Culleton told the media that he wanted to get out of the detention center so he could start a family with his wife, he already has kids back in Ireland – and he’s hardly father of the year.
Culleton’s 18-year-old twin daughters say he “abandoned them when they were 18 months old, leaving their mother, Margaret ‘Maggie’ Morrissey, to raise them alone,” the New York Post reported.
“I feel that we were born and he just up and left. He did abandon us. That’s what he did,” Heather Morrissey told the Daily Mail.
Once again, it seems, the corporate media failed to do its homework before hoisting up yet another deadbeat and criminal as an international hero. Meanwhile, they expect Americans to continue to believe that ICE are the bad guys for enforcing immigration laws and bringing men like Culleton to justice.
The story of Seamus Culleton – just like the stories of every other fake immigration martyr – is yet another reminder to wait for all the facts to come in before rushing to judgement.
AMAC Newsline contributor Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
