Deportation Over a $25 Check – How ICE Targets an Irish Grandmother

Sometimes it is the small stories that reveal the full brutality of a system. Donna Brown-Hughes, 58 years old, has lived in the United States since she was eleven. She has renewed her green card seven times, raised her children, watched her grandchildren grow up, built a life. And now she is supposed to be deported – because she wrote a bad check for 25 dollars ten years ago.

What sounds like an absurd farce is bitter reality under the current deportation policy. ICE relies on strict removal rules that allow crimes – even petty offenses – to be used as grounds for deportation. The fact that Donna Brown-Hughes’ “offense” dates back a decade, that she paid her debt and has had no further incidents since, does not matter. The system is not interested in remorse or rehabilitation, only in the stamp in the criminal record. Particularly bitter: her husband Jim Brown still voted for Donald Trump in 2024 – and now says he regrets that vote “100 percent.” “I voted for law and order, not for my wife’s life to be destroyed,” he said in an interview. “She has been an American in every way but on paper for 47 years.”

The story of Donna Brown-Hughes is not an isolated case. Thousands of families are currently being crushed by an apparatus that wants to demonstrate toughness at any cost. Our desks are full, cases that have nothing to do with common sense anymore. It is the triumph of bureaucracy over common sense: a country that tolerated millions of undocumented people for decades is now tearing them out of their lives – over trivialities that are completely out of proportion to the punishment. Civil rights organizations warn that such cases further undermine trust in the rule of law. “If a 25-dollar check after ten years is more important than four decades of lived life, then that is not justice but pure arbitrariness,” said a spokesperson for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Donna Brown-Hughes has filed an appeal. But even if she gains time, the fear will remain – the fear that every ring of the doorbell could mark the beginning of her last day in the United States. Her story is a reminder that the immigration debate is not just about big numbers but about human destinies. And it forces us to ask the question of what kind of country the United States wants to be: one that gives people opportunities – or one that tears them out of life over 25 dollars.