Banishing Point

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Lorna Siggins, in the Irish Times, reports this morning how Hawo, a 23-year-old wheelchair user from Somalia, was woken up by officers from the Garda National Immigration Bureau at 11pm one night in November 2012 and told she was going to be deported.

Polio sufferer Hawo, who had arrived in Ireland aged 17 in 2008, was taken to Dublin Airport with no belongings, other than €60 that her husband gave her.

Ms Siggins reports:

“At one point [on the night GNIB officers came to deport her], she recalls, one of the officers became exasperated. She says he told her: “We will grab you from where you are and put you in your chair if you don’t go.” There is no independent corroboration of this remark.”

“Hawo’s husband was told to pack a few things for his wife. The officers told him that he could travel with them in a taxi to the airport to say goodbye. Hawo got into her wheelchair, put a dress over her pyjamas, but refused to use the controls. The taxi arrived at the airport. By then, she realised she had forgotten her incontinence pads. Her husband offered to return home to get them, but was told he wouldn’t be allowed to see his wife again if he did. They were put in a waiting room.”

“My husband helped me to lie on some chairs, but they didn’t want that and three of them carried me back into my wheelchair,” she says. “Another man wanted to shout at me, while two of his colleagues were trying to stop him. Then they took my husband away.”… She asked if she could see her travel documents. They declined.

“She asked if she could go to the toilet. While in the cubicle, an officer warned her not to “do something stupid”.

“One man pushed me in the chair to the airplane and two walked beside,” she says. It was now daylight, approaching 9am. The front wheels in her wheelchair had not been working properly, she recalls, and it stalled. She fell out onto the tarmac and burst into tears. One of the officers took photos, she claims, and warned her that he would “show them what you did” – implying that she had stalled the chair and fallen on purpose. She told him that she was “not going anywhere”. After a few minutes, she recalls, one of the officers asked her if they could lift her back into her chair. She was wheeled back into the terminal and told she “wasn’t going to leave now” but would be taken to prison.”

Ms Siggins’ report follows another on Saturday in which she wrote how Somali asylum seeker Mohamed Sleyum Ali died after he was allegedly attacked in Tanzania hours after he landed in the country following his deportation from Ireland in April 2014.

Wheelchair user with just €60 in pocket taken to brink of deportation (Lorna Siggins, Irish Times)

Deported from Ireland, attacked and left to die (Lorna Siggins, Irish Times, Saturday, January 3, 2015)

Previously: Deaths Of Asylum Seekers

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35 thoughts on “Banishing Point

  1. Paolo

    Uncorroborated propaganda.

    Irish people are generally happy to give asylum to those that need it but once the asylum process is completed, if asylum is not granted then that person should be deported. Once someone receives a deportation order he/she should not be surprised if they get deported.

    We either have an asylum process or we do not.

    1. Don Pidgeoni

      You can deport people without acting like complete f***hats though. Or are the Irish people happy to have people treated like that woman in their name?

        1. Paolo

          @fluffybiscuits She had plenty of time to prepare for her deportation once the order was issued but she ignored the order. She is then complaining about being marched out of the country when, in fact, she could have had all her belongings ready to go. Her dignity was entirely within her own grasp.

          Once again. I am not against immigration and certainly not against asylum seekers. I think we have a much more multicultural society today than we did in the early 90’s and Ireland is better for it. What I do disagree with is people who try to flout the system and then produce stories like the one above. A story that is uncorroborated and therefore cannot be taken at face value.

          Would you expect to get residency in another country without going through due process? If you went Nigeria and failed to get residency and then didn’t comply with a deportation order, would you be surprised if you were unceremoniously ejected? Would you go to the press?

      1. Soundings

        You haven’t heard the officers’ side of the story, though.

        Bottom line, she was being deported and didn’t want to go. Sad and tragic for the immigrant, but either we restrict immigration or we don’t, and if we do, there will always be personally sad stories.

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          Yes, because they wouldn’t lie would they? You can deport someone in a manner that is respectful. I mean, she’s hardly a flight risk is she??!

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          Not being asked to go back and get incontinence pads hurts who exactly? FFS, you people are dicks.

          1. Odis

            Agreed, the description provided here is errrm… gross.

            I suppose the next question would be why would the immigration officers act in such a manner?

            And the path we are being led down (here) is because they are monsters with no respect for human dignity.

            Another plausible explanation, might be that the immigration officers, had been met with various forms of resistance and believed they were being messed around with. And the storyteller, in this instance, would have an interest in not giving us these details.

            There are (of course) a number of explanations.

            We don’t know because we only have one side of the story.

            That’s my point – if you will.

        1. Don Pidgeoni

          Ostrich meet the sand. Of course no one in Ireland would treat someone like this. You’re all great lads!!!

  2. Soundings

    You may have missed it, but in December 2014, the state gazette published the names and addresses of the people granted Irish citizenship in 2010-2012.

    You’ll find the first listing here (scroll down to page 32)
    http://www.irisoifigiuil.ie/currentissues/Ir091214.PDF

    (BS can’t take more than one hyperlink), so just look at the 16th Dec and 23rd Dec editions to find the other two lists. There are around 6,000 there. These exclude immigrants from the EU and elsewhere who are just working here, and have been given PPS numbers.

    Other than the dubious decision to publish the full addresses (isn;t there a data protection issue there?), the lists are sobering reminders of the huge numbers of foreigners who work and live in Ireland. For good or ill (I personally think it’s a mix), Ireland is changing as it absorbs these foreigners. We don’t have infinite capacity, we do have 11% unemployment, we do have alarming emigration of Irish natives. On the other hand, we have responsibilities and new blood can enrich us, culturally, economically and countless other ways,

    But we have rules for immigration, and criteria, and if they’re not enforced, it becomes a free-for-all. Does anyone want that?

      1. Janet

        Thanks for this Fluffy, a good read and I hear where you are coming from. Alas I fear too many people need a lot of self reflection and personal work for this to ever happen. I’d like to share you’re fundamental belief in humanity. A long way to go for this to be viable.

        1. AH HEYOR

          Yeah, it’s much easier to shout “GET THE FOREIGNERS”

          than

          “WE SHOULD BE PROMOTING AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY THAT TREATS EVERYONE FAIRLY AND WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT TO HUMAN RIGHTS”

    1. Mark Dennehy

      6,000 in two years in a country with 4.5 million people. That’s two thirds of a thousandth of a percent.
      Assuming we keep taking in immigrants at that rate and assuming they’re all immortal and assuming our birthrate matches our deathrate precisely, we’ll be a minority in our own country in only 76,500 years.

      Clearly this is a pressing issue of the highest priority.

      (On the other hand, it would mean your taxes would fall by a good 40% or so because the population would have doubled).

      1. Janet

        Except you won’t be a minority because their children will be Irish !!!! There will just be more Irish people. Nice attitude dude.

          1. Mark Dennehy

            However, issuing swords to the immigrants and reminding them that there can only be one might in a single sweep decapitate both the immigration problem *and* the problem of the summer RTE lineup.

            What? ITV can set dogs on people for a tv show and we can’t remake the Highlander? THIS IS PC GONE MAD!

  3. MilkyMoo

    Hey, Broadsheet,

    Long-time lurker, first-time complainer. (I’ll try not to make it a habit, I swear.) Any chance ye could change “wheelchair-bound” to something a little more modern, like “wheelchair user”?

  4. AliG

    So the news here is that someone who came here and was found to be falsely claiming asylum and living off the state may be deported. Sounds Fair, perhaps she should have left voluntarily with dignity once she failed in her first application.

    1. Janet

      Sometimes you’d swear no Irish person was ever at the bottom of the pile and been given a leg up. There actually are enough resources for everyone with a different approach, not just in Ireland but world wide.

  5. Kieran NYC

    Would all the ‘Get Em Out’ gobsh1tes here be happy to have all the illegal Irish in the US expelled in the same way?

  6. Gerry Johns

    Based on what I have read above, this is an appalling way to treat somebody. OK – their application failed, they were on the way out – what’s the harm in a little bit of human kindness before the door is finally slammed shut?

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