THE IRISH wife of a Nigerian asylum seeker has accused Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern of “not praying to the same God” as she does following the deportation of her husband yesterday.
Gillian Olabode, who lives in Athlone, Co Westmeath, said current immigration rules were patently unfair because spouses of Irish citizens from outside the EU were being targeted for deportation, while the spouses of other EU nationals could not be deported.
Her husband, Henry Olabode, who unsuccessfully applied for asylum when he arrived in the Republic in 2007, was sent back to Nigeria on a deportation flight yesterday.
Residents Against Racism said it had received reports that two Nigerian asylum seekers with Irish children were also deported on the flight.
The Department of Justice refused to confirm the identity of anyone on the flight last night.
Ms Olabode said she was heartbroken at news that her husband had been deported and would fight to have him allowed back into the country. She said it was unfair to break up families and said her two children – who she had with previous partner – would be hurt by this experience.
“I travelled up from from Athlone to visit him in the prison where they were keeping him as usual yesterday but no one could tell me what had happened to him.
“A friend of Henry’s later told me that he had spoken to him shortly before he was taken on to the plane for deportation,” she said. “No one contacted me to tell me what was happening. I’ve been told Dermot Ahern is a religious man but he clearly doesn’t pray to the same God that I do if he can separate two people that love each other like this,” she said. Ms Olabode said she was aware the Department of Justice was conducting a campaign against so-called sham marriages, often known as marriages of convenience. But she said her marriage, which took place in May 2009, was no sham and criticised immigration officials for not even knowing that her husband was married to an Irish citizen when they came to arrest him to take him for deportation last month.
Solicitor Brian Burns, who represents Mr Olabode, said there was a difference in the rights that a European citizen living in Ireland enjoyed when compared to that of an Irish citizen.
“A European citizen has the right for their spouses to join them and reside in Ireland whereas this right for an Irish citizen is at the State’s discretion,” he said.
This anomaly in the law follows a judgment by the European Court of Justice in 2007, which barred the Government from deporting the non-EU spouses of EU citizens.
The Government has criticised this judgment and is seeking to have the EU rules on free movement amended to enable them to deport the spouses of EU citizens. But it has so far failed to persuade its EU partners to agree to change the rules.
A spokesman for the Minister said he could not comment on individual cases. “Every sovereign state has to have robust immigration laws and these laws must be constitutionally sound,” he added.