It’s Just Insane: Husband Speaks on Detained Irish Green Card Holder

(WASHINGTON, DC) It was the quiet phrase “It’s just insane” that cut through the formal setting of a House hearing room, as Jim Brown told lawmakers how his wife, Irish green card holder Donna Hughes-Brown, ended up in an immigration jail thousands of miles from home after a routine trip abroad. Speaking before the House Committee on Homeland Security Democrats in July 2025, Brown described how his family’s life in the United States 🇺🇸 was turned upside down when Donna was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and later sent to a county jail in Kentucky.

Donna’s background and life in the U.S.

• Donna Hughes-Brown was born in England to Irish parents in 1966.
• She moved to the United States in 1977 as a child and has held lawful permanent resident status for 48 years.
• Brown emphasized that she has never lived in Ireland and has built a quiet life in the U.S. as a home healthcare worker, caring for elderly Americans, including a Korean War prisoner of war.

“I think of Donna — she goes to work, she pays her taxes, she cares for people who has nobody else,” Brown told lawmakers, his voice shaking. “To see her treated like this after almost five decades here – it’s just insane.”

How the detention unfolded

According to Brown’s testimony:

• Donna returned from visiting relatives in Ireland in July 2025.
• At O’Hare Airport, officers told her she needed to sign some paperwork and would then be released.
• Instead, she was handcuffed, taken into custody, and placed on a long transfer to the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky, where she has been held ever since.
• Brown said he did not know where she was for hours, then days, as he tried to get answers from ICE and local officials.

Transport conditions (per Brown’s account)

• Brown said Donna told him she was held in a van for around 12 hours with no seat belts, no food, and no water.
• He called the conditions degrading and dangerous, and said they did not match the treatment one would expect for a long-term legal resident.

“This is a woman who’s never been in trouble, never been arrested, never hurt anyone,” Brown told the panel. “And they move her around like cargo. It’s just insane that this can happen to someone who has done everything right.”

Legal status, hearing date, and rights

• Donna faces a deportation hearing on December 19, 2025.
• The government has not publicly detailed the legal basis for her removal case.
• Her lawyers say she remains a lawful permanent resident and should be allowed to fight any allegations while free with her family.
• For green card holders, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services describes rules and rights on its official page on Green Cards, noting they have the right to live and work in the country but can still face removal in some situations.

Congressional hearing and political context

The hearing, titled “Unmasking the Truth: How Trump’s Immigration Raids Target U.S. Citizens and Terrorize Communities,” featured Democrats on the committee using Donna’s case to question whether enforcement policies that began under President Trump are still affecting households under President Biden.

• Democrats argued that aggressive enforcement tactics can blur the line between targeting people with serious criminal records and sweeping up long-term residents with deep ties to the country.
• They pointed to Brown’s story as an example of how raids and checkpoints can affect people who have held legal status for decades, and even, in some cases, U.S. citizens.

Similar cases and advocacy response

• Advocacy groups say Donna’s case is not isolated.
• They compared it to Cliona Ward, an Irish green card holder detained by ICE in April 2025 over a decades-old conviction that had been expunged. Ward spent weeks in detention before public pressure and a renewed legal review led to her release in May 2025, when the government dropped its case.
• Analysis by VisaVerge.com raised questions about how immigration databases handle old or cleared records and why people with long histories in the country are sometimes treated as new arrivals with unknown backgrounds.

Unions and immigrant-rights organizations have seized on these cases to argue the system punishes people who are already woven into American communities. Donna’s employer, a home care agency, has joined calls for her release, stressing the impact on elderly clients who lost a trusted caregiver overnight.

“We tell people to keep their status legal, renew their documents, follow every rule,” one advocate said after the hearing. “Then they see Donna in jail and think, if that can happen to her, what protects me?”

Impact on the family

Brown described the emotional and financial toll:

• Explaining the situation to relatives who cannot believe a nearly 50-year resident can be locked up this way.
• Scrambling to find lawyers and paying for phone calls from detention.
• Watching savings vanish: “Every call from the jail costs money. Every form costs money. Every delay costs money,” Brown said.

“We worked for years to build a simple, steady life. Now it’s lawyers, hearings, and worry. It’s just insane that this is what immigration policy looks like for a family like ours.”

Legal mechanics and system constraints

Legal experts say the case highlights:

• The significant discretion that frontline officers have at ports of entry and during enforcement actions.
• Even with a valid green card, officers can question past conduct, travel, or paperwork issues and place someone into removal proceedings.
• Once placed in proceedings, release from detention often depends on bond decisions, legal filings, and backlogged immigration courts.
• Government data show hundreds of thousands of cases pending nationwide, with some people waiting years for a final answer.

Government perspective and critics’ alternatives

• The Department of Homeland Security has not commented in detail on Donna’s case, citing privacy rules.
• Officials generally defend detention as a tool to ensure people appear for hearings and to protect public safety.
• Critics argue that jailing long-term residents with strong community ties rarely serves those goals and advocate for alternatives such as:
  • supervised release,
  • check-ins,
  • or ankle monitors,
    which they say could keep people in the process without tearing families apart.

Supporters of tougher enforcement counter that officers must be able to act when they believe someone may be removable under the law, regardless of how long they have been in the country.

Timeline of key dates

What’s next

For now, Brown says his focus is the December 19, 2025 hearing and the hope that an immigration judge will allow Donna to return home while her case proceeds. He told lawmakers he never imagined needing to ask Congress for help just to bring his wife back to the couch and kitchen they share.

“We’re not asking for special treatment,” he said. “We’re just asking for basic fairness. After nearly half a century here, to treat Donna like she’s some kind of threat – it’s just insane.”