Human history is full of liars and opportunists who build their political empires by caging the vulnerable.
In the 1850s, those opportunists weaponized the government against Irish immigrants fleeing famine. Today, they use DHS and ICE. We like to tell ourselves that society moves forward. But for Seamus Culleton, the dark history of American nativism has come full circle.
Seamus Culleton (pictured with his American wife Tiffany Smyth before detention). The Irish national, who lived in the Boston area for nearly 20 years, married a U.S. citizen, ran a plastering business, and held a valid work permit, has been held by ICE since September 2025.
Culleton did everything the system demands. He lived in the United States for two decades. He married a U.S. citizen. He kept his record completely clean and held a valid work permit. But none of that protected him. For nearly six months, this Irish national has been held hostage by ICE in a Texas detention facility. His reality obliterates the prevailing political narrative and exposes the raw horror of an agency operating with absolute impunity.
To understand what is happening to Culleton, you have to look at the ugly truth of American history. When the Irish arrived on coffin ships in the 19th century, they were met by the virulent bigotry of the Know Nothing party. They were depicted as subhuman threats to the republic.
Actual 1850s newspaper advertisements and signs declaring “No Irish Need Apply” — common symbols of widespread anti-Irish discrimination during the Great Famine immigration wave.
Cincinnati Once Declared ‘No Irish Need Apply’ - Cincinnati Magazine
“No Irish Need Apply” signs normalized their exclusion, while nativist mobs and police forces terrorized their neighborhoods. Today, the opportunists in power have simply traded their mob violence for federal badges and blank checks. The systemic bigotry of the past never left. It just became institutionalized.
19th-century political cartoons illustrating the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic hysteria of the Know Nothing (American) Party, which portrayed Irish immigrants as dangerous invaders.
Speaking from the inside, Culleton paints a picture that echoes the darkest chapters of global history. He describes the facility not as a processing center but as a modern day concentration camp. He has been locked in the exact same room for months on end. He is trapped in a massive complex of temporary tents designed to warehouse human beings, with up to 1,000 detainees crammed into a single tent.
Aerial and ground views of Camp East Montana (also called the East Montana Processing Center) at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas — the giant temporary tent city where Seamus Culleton has been held for months.
The cruelty inside these walls is systemic and deeply intentional. Detainees are kept locked inside all day, every day, with barely a glimpse of sunshine or a breath of fresh air. Culleton stated that after four and a half months of confinement, he could count on both hands the amount of times he had been allowed outside.
The horror extends to a daily, calculated battle for basic survival. Men are fed kids-sized meals three times a day, leaving an entire population perpetually hungry, weakened, and exhausted. With no commissary available to buy extra provisions, there is zero escape from these deliberate starvation tactics. The physical environment mirrors this degradation. Culleton reports that the toilets and showers are completely nasty and rarely cleaned, forcing people to exist in absolute, humiliating filth while staring at the two televisions mounted on their wall.
But the filth and the hunger are secondary to the sheer terror of simply staying alive. Culleton explicitly stated he is in fear for his life, alleging that detainees have been killed by the facility’s own security staff. This is not bureaucratic negligence. It is an environment of active, unchecked violence enforced by guards who face zero accountability. The day-to-day reality is a constant nightmare of unpredictable danger, where a riot or a fatal assault could happen at any second.
Cases like Culleton’s prove that the system is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed by the opportunists running it. It is an apparatus built on the oldest foundations of American racism, optimized to break people physically and mentally while stripping away their fundamental human rights.
The unfiltered truth is that ICE has become a modern engine of historical horror, locking people in dark, filthy tents and daring the rest of the country to look away.
