If you confined judgement on the Trump administration’s immigration policy to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website you would likely be cheering.
The website features a veritable rogues gallery of “criminal aliens” who have been detained and in some cases deported. The photos make the FBI’s most wanted list look like a beauty pageant lineup.
Few would object to the apprehension of serious criminals who have entered the United States illegally and have continued their criminal activities in our midst.
The initial understanding of ICE’s enhanced role in going after people illegally in the country was that it would be primarily focused on serious criminals and gang members.
But, as we all have seen, it has gone well beyond this.
The young woman in the photograph is 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza.
She is from Honduras but had lived in the U.S. since the age of seven. She was about to board a flight at Boston’s Logan Airport heading for Austin, Texas where her parents live. She would surprise them for Thanksgiving. Lopez Belloza, however, was pulled aside and would end up in shackles and handcuffs.
She is a student at Babson College outside Boston. Babson’s business school is one of the top rated in the country. This young woman had a bright future and would in all likelihood have contributed significantly to the only country she knew as home, the United States.
She was deported to Honduras despite her attorney securing a court order preventing her removal from the U.S. Some courts matter more than others these times.
In the past couple of days the Boston Globe reported that immigration agents had appeared at Lopez Belloza’s family home in Austin. Once it gets its teeth into something ICE’s appetite is seemingly insatiable.
Lopez Belloza is Honduran. She could just as easily have been Irish.
Few would argue that the United States has a right to control its borders and to properly run its immigration system. And few would argue that individuals in the country deserve a more minimal legal consideration if they commit serious crimes.
But we have witnessed the forceful detention of legal residents and even citizens. We have witnessed families being torn apart and thousands of people being confined in detention centers, often in horrific conditions.
This newspaper is aware of one particular horror story from a detention center that would sound as if it took place in a Russian Gulag.
ICE would argue that it is carrying out the job that it is mandated to do. It’s likely the case that many ICE agents feel uncomfortable with some aspects of that job. It’s hard to judge feelings when your face is hidden by a mask. Some agents, the more zealous, likely relish their tasks.
It’s hard to know where all this will end. We are coming up to Christmas and it’s certain that more families will experience a holiday they will want to forget.
America wears its christianity, the various forms of it, very loudly on its sleeve. But said christianity is being drowned out amid the cries of people whose only crime is to reach for a chance at pursuing the American Dream.
It all comes down to politics in the end; as it always does. Congress has been a miserable failure for all too many years in the matter of comprehensive immigration reform. With an aging population you would think that an ordered immigration system would be a priority on Capitol Hill.
But of course Capitol Hill is lately very much a second tier legislative entity behind an administration that grows in power, and the desire to wield power, with every passing day.
The Statue of Liberty still stands tall in New York Harbor. But Lady Liberty is in the unemployment line. And not to forget, she is French. Hopefully she has the correct papers.
There comes a time in every nation’s story when the people must decide whether they will stand silent… or stand together.
We are living in that moment now.
For too long our communities have been ignored, divided, and pushed aside while decisions about our future are made behind closed doors. The pain felt in towns and villages across this island is real — but so is the strength that lives within us.
The tear in the image is not a sign of weakness.
It is a reminder.
A reminder of what we have lost…
And a reminder of what we can still save.
When we stand united — shoulder to shoulder, county to county — there is nothing stronger than the people of this island. No government, no outside influence, and no agenda can overpower a nation that remembers who it is.
We do not weep for our country.
We rise for it.
We protect it.
We take back our voice, our community, and our future.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem says she will review the case of Donna Hughes Brown, an Irish citizen and green card holder in ICE detention.
Kerry O’Shea
@kerry_oshea
Dec 12, 2025
The case of Donna Hughes Brown, the Irish citizen and US green card holder who has been in ICE detention since July, is set to be reviewed by the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.
Hughes Brown, who was born to Irish parents in England and raised in the US since she was a child, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in July when she and her husband Jim Brown were returning from Ireland.
About ten years ago, Hughes Brown, who was facing hard financial times as a single mother, wrote two bad checks while grocery shopping. She was charged with a misdemeanor, paid the restitution, and completed one year of probation.
Hughes Brown is understood to have been detained in July under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was amended by President Trump on July 4 as part of his so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act.’
According to the Irish Times, the changes stipulate that any foreign-born resident of the US who has violated any law whatsoever at any stage over the previous two decades can be deemed inadmissible or barred from entry to the US.
It came into effect on July 24, when the Browns were already in Ireland. Hughes Brown has been in the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky since July.
Her case was raised twice during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on ‘Worldwide Threats to the Homeland’ in Washington, DC, on Thursday, December 11, by two Democratic Congressmen – Representative Lou Correa and Representative Seth Magaziner.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, a close Trump ally, was among the witnesses during Thursday’s hearing.
The green card holder’s case was also previously raised last month during a hearing hosted by the House Committee on Homeland Security Democrats.
Hughes Brown’s husband, a decorated retired Navy combat veteran, testified during last month’s hearing and was present for this week’s hearing.
“Secretary Noem, Trump administration, you are going after the worst of the worst criminals, and we agree with you,” Rep Correa said to Noem during Thursday’s hearing.
“The problem is, 70% of the people you arrested have no criminal record. You’re going after noncriminal immigrants, US citizens, and permanent legal residents.
“Donna Hughes Brown, Irish citizen, green card holder, 48 years in the United States. She also happens to be the mother of a US Marine, sister to a retired Army colonel.
“She is in ICE detention since July. She tried to come back from Ireland, arrested, has been there since then.
“Her crime? She wrote two bad checks for less than $80 a decade ago.
“You arrested her, she’s in custody. Her husband Jim Brown came to us and told us her story. Jim told us, ‘I voted for President Trump because he promised to go after criminals in our community, not people like my wife.'”
Correa then played a video for Noem of Brown admitting that he voted for Trump because he’s “an idiot,” adding that Evangelical Christian people “were lied to.” He said he and his wife are ministers who help the needy.
Addressing Noem, Correa said: “These people, Donna Hughes Brown, are not the individuals that should be deported.”
Hughes Brown’s story was raised again later by Rep Seth Magaziner, who introduced Brown to Noem and highlighted how he is a combat veteran.
“Because of you, Jim’s wife Donna has been in prison for the last four months,” Magaziner told Noem.
“She did not come here illegally, and she has never committed any crime other than writing two bad checks totalling $80 ten years ago. She is currently in prison and facing deportation.”
Magaziner asked Noem “what possible explanation could there be” for “locking up” Hughes Brown.
Noem responded: “Sir, it is not my prerogative, my latitude, or my job to pick and choose what laws in this country …”
Magaziner interjected: “You have broad discretion as the Secretary. You can issue parole, you can do all kinds of things, but you’re choosing not to.
“Will you commit, again, to just reviewing Donna’s case and reuniting this combat veteran with his beloved wife, who also loves this country?”
On This Day: Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers passes away in 2009/
Renowned Irish folk singer Liam Clancy died on December 4, 2009. We look back at the legendary singer’s lifetime.
Dermot McEvoy
@IrishCentral
Dec 04, 2025
Remembering the late, great Liam Clancy. Remembering the late, great Liam Clancy. RollingNews.ie
Legendary Irish singer Liam Clancy passed away on December 4, 2009, at the age of 74
When I was growing up in the Irish-heavy north Greenwich Village of the 1960s, most of my pals wanted to be Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays. I was different. I wanted to be Liam Clancy.
Why?
Because he was a rebel. And a rogue. He taught me about the audacious Brennan on the Moor and the deadly fate of young Roddy McCorley. He sang sad love songs in that beautiful voice that would bring you to tears—then tore into the English with something like “God Bless England” or “Mr. Moses-Ri-Tooral-i-ay.”
I first learned of the pleasures and evils of drink because of “Whiskey, You’re the Devil” and a young girl named “Nancy Whiskey” who’d grab you by the knees.” And he didn’t let the all-powerful clergy off the hook either, poking gentle, but pointed, fun at the priests and nuns in the audience.
There was another reason he was my hero—I knew Liam always got the girl. And, boy, knowing what I know now, did he ever!
I got to know Liam casually in the 1970s and ‘80s when he drank at the Lion’s Head saloon on Christopher Street in the Village. I would tease him about why he always wore a cap—the worst show business sin, baldness!—and he would go right back at me, commenting about my scrawny red beard.
At the Head, he was a regular and a regular guy, and at home, he was, because of his albums, part of the family. He was loved and admired on both sides of the Atlantic, and as soon as his death was announced on RTE on December 4, 2009, my phone started ringing with calls from cousins and friends in Dublin. His loss was profoundly felt not as a celebrity but as a friend.
Liam Clancy was a superb performer and showman
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem famously burst on the scene with an appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in January 1961.
“We weren’t that impressed,” wrote Liam in his autobiography. “We were arrogant. Young and arrogant. As they say in Ireland, we didn’t give a tinker’s damn. But we accepted.”
There was a cancellation of one of the acts, and the Clancys and Makem filled, getting 15 minutes of uninterrupted publicity. Fifteen minutes and 80 million viewers later, they were, as Tom Clancy succinctly said, “Fuckin’ famous!” After working at their craft in the back room of the White Horse saloon on Hudson Street in the Village for years, they were instantly, because of the power of television, celebrities.
Greenwich Village contributed a lot to the group. Back then, in the early ‘60s, it was a hotbed of poets and folksingers. Odetta at one joint, Tom Paxton at another, Peter, Paul & Mary around the corner. And a young future Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, hobnobbing with them all, especially one Liam Clancy. Liam was Dylan’s hero, too.
In his obituary, the New York Times quoted Clancy saying: “People who were trying to escape repressed backgrounds, like mine and Bob Dylan’s, were congregating in Greenwich Village. It was a place you could be yourself, where you could get away from the directives of the people who went before you, people who you loved but who you knew had blinkers on.”
Blinkers off, Clancy, in Dylan’s eyes, attained new artistic heights. “I never heard a singer as good as Liam, ever,” said Dylan. “He was just the best ballad singer I ever heard in my life.”
Liam Clancy was a man of his time through his songs
Liam could sing about anything—the sea, apple orchards, traveling people—but he also had a social conscience. He sang poignantly about homelessness in “Streets of London”.
He sang about our delicate ecological balance on Mother Earth in “The Garden Song”.
He did not avoid the hot issues of the Northern Ireland Troubles either. In the 1970s, when RTE banned the voices of protest in the North—one of the dumbest political decisions ever conceived by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, the highly overrated Conor Cruise O’Brien—Liam did not forget the struggle.
It was almost impossible, even in the United States, to get a recording of “The Men Behind the Wire,” but Liam sang it—and was criticized for it—when others would not even touch the incendiary rebel song, the best song to come out of the Troubles.
Liam’s nationalism ran deep. His family owned a pub in Tipperary during the War of Independence, and the Black and Tans often paid unwelcome visits.
He could as easily recite Robert Emmet’s Speech from the Dock as belt out Padraic Pearse’s “Oro Se Do Bheatha” in Irish.
But he was also a showman in the best sense of the word. He could robustly recite the degenerate French poet Charles Baudelaire’s “Get Drunk”, then launch into a rendition of “Ar Fol Lol O,” a song about the innate beauty of mankind.
His signature song, of course, was “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” maybe the most beautiful anti-war song ever written. At concerts, when he sang this song, you could hear a pin drop, and when he was finished, there was no applause because the audience was stunned. It was not unusual to hear sobbing from men and women alike.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem taught me about Orangemen’s Day.
The almost Clancys & Makem sitcom: “Bigger Than the Beatles”
A couple of years ago, I came across one of the extraordinary oddities about the Clancys and Makem. There was an old rerun of Danny Thomas’ show Make Room for Daddy from 1963 on TV called “Oh, the Clancys.” They sang “Brennan on the Moor” and “Portláirge.”
I was so surprised by this show, I emailed the late Jerry Campbell, who was their manager for most of the 1960s. Back in the ’60s, Danny Thomas not only had his own show but also, with Sheldon Leonard, successfully packaged two other hit sitcoms: Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke.
Campbell’s response shocked me:
“I had a deal with Danny Thomas & Sheldon Leonard,” Campbell emailed me, “what you saw was basically the ‘pilot.’ It went well, and I got a firm offer for CB & TM to star in their own weekly show on NBC, produced by Danny Thomas & Sheldon Leonard & I was to be the associate producer. A lot of money is involved. Firm 13 weeks on NBC, plus 13-week options on & on and rerun right going on for years.”
“Then the ‘fun’ began!! When the ‘folkies’ found out about it, they struck Liam—He was ‘selling out,’ etc. Heavy-duty pressure from a number of people. Basically, these people were very jealous that they hadn’t been offered the ‘deal’. They all backed Liam into a corner & I kept explaining to him what was going on, so did the William Morris Agency, who represented Thomas & Leonard, and so did NBC.”
“Then, a number of people got onto Tommy Makem & he caved in saying he didn’t want to play an Irishman on TV. I told him point-blank that I would be hard put to see him playing an Italian on the show. Crazy Shit!! All the ‘Irish’ who got into the ‘discussion’ were basically afraid CB & TM would be very successful and they didn’t want that to happen & CB & TM. I didn’t, couldn’t understand this. When these same people who talked Liam & Tommy out of ‘selling out’ got their own deal with the networks, they jumped right on the ‘bandwagon.’ They turned down the entire deal—left big time $$Millions on the table.”
“They did the same thing on a movie deal I had with Peter Bogdanovich for them to star in a Western that he & Larry McMurtry wrote. CB & TM made some big-time dumb career decisions, but there was nothing I could do about it. If they had accepted the deals I got for them they would have been bigger then the Beatles.”
“Our Revels Now Are Ended”
One of my proudest possessions is a copy of “The Mountain of the Women” that Liam sent me. I gave Liam a cameo in my Michael Collins fantasy novel, “Terrible Angel,” sent him a copy in Ireland, and invited him to my book party at the old Lion’s Head, now the Kettle of Fish.
In response, he sent his autobiography to me with this inscription: “For Dermot McEvoy, January 17th, 2003. One good book deserves another. Thanks for thinking of me. I’d love to have been at the launch in the Head/Kettle of Fish. Let’s have a glass there sometime. Give my best to any of the old gang you may come across and—great good luck with the book.—Liam Clancy.”
We never had our glass, but I got to know Liam better, for in the last decade of his life, he published an autobiography, “The Mountain of the Women: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour,” which told his story, his struggles, and his many loves and many children.
He went even further in the documentary “The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy,” which is a brutally honest look at the rise, the tragic fall, and the heroic rise again of Liam Clancy.
He once famously said to Bob Dylan, “No fear, no jealousy, no meanness,” which is about the best philosophy a man can have in this tough life.
Liam ended every concert with “The Parting Glass.” It’s as if Liam were trying to give his life philosophy—be true to yourself and do no harm to others.
“Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.
And of all the harm that ere I’ve done, alas was done to none but me.
And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.
Of all the comrades that ere I had, they’re sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ere I had, they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I’ll softly call, “Goodnight and joy be with you all!”.
