Irish man Seamus Culleton held for months by ICE says he had U.S. work permit, and now fears for his life

An Irish man who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 20 years has been detained by U.S. immigration officials for almost five months despite insisting he had a valid U.S. work permit and a pending green card case as the spouse of an American citizen. Seamus Culleton has said he fears for his life due to the conditions in the detention center where he's being held in Texas.  Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report. In:

An Irish man who has lived in the U.S. for nearly 20 years has been detained by U.S. immigration officials for almost five months despite insisting he had a valid U.S. work permit and a pending green card case as the spouse of an American citizen. Seamus Culleton has said he fears for his life due to the conditions in the detention center where he's being held in Texas. 

Seamus Culleton, who lived in Boston, is being held at the El Paso Camp East Montana, an ICE detention facility inside the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas, according to the agency's detainee locator system. Speaking to Irish state broadcaster RTÉ in a phone interview Monday from the detention center, Culleton described life at the camp as a "nightmare."

"You don't know what's going to happen on a day-to-day basis. You don't know if there's going to be riots, you don't know what's going to happen," he told RTÉ. He characterized the detention facilities as "a bunch of temporary tents."

Culleton said he had rarely been outside in the five months since his arrest. 

"I have barely any outside time, no fresh air, no sunshine. We have two TVs on the wall. There are 72 detainees here in total. We get three meals a day, very very small meals — kid size meals, so everybody is hungry," he said.