An Irish man with legal permission to work in the United States, who has spent nearly five months in a Texas ICE detention facility, has described the conditions there as a “modern-day concentration camp” in a harrowing interview, detailing widespread illness and competition for food.

Seamus Culleton, of Ireland’s County Kilkenny, haslivedin the US for nearly 20 years and is married to an American citizen. Despite holding a valid work permit and being in the final stages of receiving a green card — with no criminal record — he was detained by ICE agents in September 2025 after he was stopped while driving home from work.

Culleton, who is now being held at adetention facilityin El Paso, Texas, gave an interview on Monday toKieran Cuddihy, the host ofLivelineon Irish broadcaster RTÉ.

He described being locked in the “same room” for months, as well as the “filthy” conditions and lack of adequate food for the population:

The best way I could describe it is probably like a modern-day concentration camp. It’s a bunch of temporary tents. There’s probably room for a thousand detainees in each tent. I believe there’s like five tents. I’ve been locked in the same room now for four and a half months. I’ve had barely any outside time, no fresh air, no sunshine. I could probably count on both hands the amount of times I’ve been outside. So I’ve just been locked in this room all day, every day.

Describing the broader conditions, he said:

We get three meals a day, very, very small meals, kid-sized meals. So everybody’s hungry, everybody’s tired. We’ve no commissary, we’ve got no options to get extra food or anything like that. The conditions here are filled. The toilets, the showers, completely nasty, very rarely cleaned.

I’m in fear for my life now here, honestly, because people are being killed by the staff here, by the security staff, you know? And you just don’t know what’s going to happen on a day-to-day basis. You don’t if there’s going to be riots, you don’t… You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a nightmare down here.

The host of the show then asked, given the small meals, whether there was “competition for food” to which Culleton said “absolutely there is” and described how staff give “preference” to certain detainees.

“So we’d be extremely lucky to get anything extra,” he added.

Source: Drudge Report