Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

One of the most brutal things I have seen is the picking up by ICE of children and people off the streets of the US yet how far away from it are we given what happened here last week where 35 people, including five people, were deported to Nigeria? The report from the children's school principal and those who knew them said that they had been fully integrated in the school for three years and that so many of the schoolchildren were upset. They came to the Red Cow IPAS centre and it told them they were going to deported and other children were listening to this. It is a high price to pay for a bit of virtue signalling to the far right - €325,000 or thereabouts to deport 35 people so that the Minister for justice can look like the strong man and this Government looks like it is doing something against racists because that it is exactly what it is.

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