Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington emailGet our free Inside Washington emailAn Irish grandmother of five, who is married to an American citizen and who has lived in the U.S. on a green card for 47 years, is facing deportation. Donna Hughes-Brown, 58, was arrested by ICE over a bad check for $25 she passed a decade ago, according to her husband. Born in England the grandmother holds Irish citizenship and first came to the U.S. with her parents and brother aged 11. She visited the Republic of Ireland earlier this summer for a family funeral, only to be arrested when she returned to Chicago O’Hare International Airport on July 29. She has since been detained for more than 30 days and held at a facility in Campbell County, Kentucky, with the U.S. government threatening to deport her over the check, which it argues was a “crime of moral turpitude,” despite her family saying she paid the money back long ago.open image in galleryDonna Hughes-Brown is facing deportation by the U.S. government over a $25 bad check she paid off a decade ago, her husband Jim says (GoFundMe)There is no statutory definition of moral turpitude but courts have found that it “refers generally to conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile or depraved, contrary to the rules of morality,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.Jim Brown – Donna’s husband of eight years, with whom she lives on a nine-acre farm in Troy, Missouri, and with whom she organizes charitable “blessing boxes” for struggling members of the local community – told Fox News’s Nevada affiliate KMOV of his anguish at his wife’s plight. “It’s just not fair that you’re telling me I have to be a bachelor the rest of my life because of some stupid policy,” Brown said. “You don’t arrest 58-year-old grandmothers. It’s just wrong. She hasn’t committed crimes. You just don’t do that.”Brown, a U.S. Navy veteran of 20 years’ service, has admitted to Newsweek that he voted for Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election but has quickly come to regret it “100 percent”.open image in galleryMissouri farmer and Navy veteran Jim Brown says the deportation threat hanging over his wife is ‘nonsense’ (KMOV)“It’s egregious that we have allowed a government to allow this to happen,” he told KMOV, dismissing the case being made against his wife as “nonsense” and rubbishing the idea that she represents a flight risk. “I think it’s a blanket thing to catch everybody, to fill beds… They signed a stupid bill that is torturing innocent people, and that’s the problem.”Brown added that he spends hours on the phone every day trying to reach his partner, protesting about the “deplorable” conditions in which she is being held and appealing for help from his state’s elected officials, so far to no avail.The office of Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe sent him a letter advising him that his wife’s case was a “federal issue” only, he said.“I want somebody to have the guts and the fortitude to stand up and say, ‘You know what? This is wrong’,” Brown said. “It’s crazy that this is happening. It’s just crazy that this is even allowed in this country. That’s the problem. It shouldn’t even be thought that this should be OK. My wife is not a criminal.”The Independent has reached out to ICE for comment.The Department of Homeland Security has previously said in a statement: “Lawful Permanent Residents presenting at a U.S. port of entry with certain criminal convictions may be found inadmissible, placed in removal proceedings, and subject to mandatory detention. “A green card is a privilege, not a right, and under our nation’s laws, our government has the authority to revoke a green card if our laws are broken and abused.”A GoFundMe campaign has been set up by friends and family to crowdfund Hughes-Brown’s legal defense, which, at the time of writing, had achieved 86 percent of its modest $6,500 goal.
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Irish grandmother and green card holder held by ICE over $25 bad check
