The women Bertie befriended are deported

In a sudden swoop on foreigners who had been refused asylum, young people about to sit their Leaving Certificate were deported, along with families who had integrated here. Some have no one to go back to in Nigeria. Colin Murphy reports

The two women pictured in this photo with Bertie Ahern were deported to Nigeria last Monday, 14 March, without some of their children, after gardaí refused to wait for the children to come home from school, the women have said.

Iyabo Nwanze was deported with her five-year-old son, who has lived most of his life in Ireland. Her nine-year-old son was left behind.

Elizabeth Odunsi was also deported with a five-year-old son. Her three older children, aged 11, 14 and 18, who are all students at local schools, were left behind.

The two women and two children were deported to Lagos, Nigeria along with 23 other adults and seven other children in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

This photo was taken at a prize-giving event at Dean Kelly National School in Athlone, where their youngest children, who had won prizes, were students.

Speaking by telephone from Lagos, Iyabo Nwanze said she had asked the gardaí to wait for her other son to get home from school before deporting her, but they had refused.

Both women, who are close friends since they came to Athlone in 2002, had reported to the local Garda station on Monday afternoon, as required under the terms of their deportation orders. They had no notice that they were to be deported on that date.

The women were brought by the gardaí to their homes to pack, where they were each joined by their youngest children when they arrived home from school. Iyabo Nwanze said they had given the gardaí details of what times their children were expected home, but the gardaí had refused to wait for the older children and took the women with the two children who were there in a Garda van to Dublin airport.

Iyabo Nwanze said the gardaí took both women's mobile phones from them at the station and refused to allow them to call anybody, including their lawyer. (Friends of the women, from Athlone, said they were unable to contact them by phone on Monday afternoon.) The phones were eventually returned late on Monday night in Dublin airport, said Iyabo Nwanze.

Iyabo Nwanze said some of the gardaí were abusive, saying to her, "shut up you African bitch" and calling her a "black monkey". She said the gardaí accused her of taking advantage of state welfare. "If we had the right to work we would have the opportunity to stand on our own two feet and contribute to the economy", Iyabo Nwanze said.

Iyabo Nwanze and Elizabeth Odunsi were both taking adult education courses at Athlone's VTOS college of further education. They had completed the European computers certificate, the ECDL, and were "fully integrated" into the college, according to one of their teachers, Emily Young. "The students and the staff are devastated", she said, describing the women as "deeply spiritual and kind to fellow students".

A family of four who had been living in Castleblaney, Co Monaghan for over three years were also deported on Monday. Nkeche Okoli and her three children had sought asylum in Ireland in 2002, having fled violence in the Kano region of northern Nigeria, where there have been repeated outbreaks of ethno-religious conflict in recent years.

Nkeche Okoli's oldest child, Ike, was one of the top three students in his class at Castleblaney College in last year's junior Cert exams. He was to appear on stage in the school play, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, last week. "We're like a school in grief", said school principal Gerry Hand. Ike had "totally integrated from day one", he said, and telling the students of his deportation "was like breaking the news of a death of a student", he said.

A 19-year-old woman who spoke to Village two weeks ago, Portia Osadiede, was also deported. She had arrived in Ireland as an unaccompanied minor aged 17. She had never known her birth mother, and had been raised by her father and step mother. Her father abandoned the family a number of years ago, and her step mother was subsequently killed in a bomb blast in Lagos in 2001. Moving to stay with distant family in Kaduna, a largely Muslim province in northern Nigeria where Sharia law is common, Portia Osadiede got caught up in inter-religious violence in November 2002 and fled back to Lagos, from where a family friend brought her to Ireland to seek asylum. Refusing her appeal for asylum, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal said she should have made greater efforts to contact her parents in Lagos before fleeing.

A number of the people deported, including Portia Osadiede, have since made contact with Fr Matthew Ogunsaye of the St Patrick's Missionary Society in Lagos. He had arranged to meet the deportation flight upon arrival in Lagos, but the deportees were taken immediately upon arrival to Kirikiri prison where they were detained. They had to pay "illegal fees" to the police of up to 10,000 naira (just under $100) before they were released, he said.

Fr Ogunsaye is trying to get temporary accommodation with the Sisters of Charity for Portia Osadiede and another of the deportees, 19-year-old Olukune Eluhanla, who was due to do his Leaving Cert this May. Neither of them have any family to support them, and both are staying in temporary accommodation with acquaintances, he said. Fr Matthew said both were shocked and upset, but were trying to cope. "It's an unprecedented horror", he said. "It's a big shock which they're trying to get out of."

A number of people who were detained for deportation on Monday were released at the last minute after their solicitors obtained High Court injunctions late on Monday preventing the deportations. Solicitor Niall Sheerin heard on Monday afternoon that two of his clients were being deported. His clients had been served their deportation orders less than 15 days previously, and there is a statutory notice period of 15 days after the serving of a deportation order during which the deportee is entitled to seek judicial review of the deportation, he said. He managed to obtain injunctions on this basis late on Monday afternoon and succeeded in having his clients released from detention at Dublin airport.

Another solicitor, Con Pendred, had to persuade a High Court judge to facilitate a 10pm sitting of the court, at "an unorthodox location", in order to obtain an injunction against the deportation of a client who was ill, he said.

"They grab hold of them at the last minute, throw them on a plane in he middle of the night, even though we might have issued proceedings for a judicial review", he said.

"If we're exercising sovereignty, let's do it in the middle of th day where the people of Ireland can see the rule of law being applied. Why is it necessary to do it in the middle of the night when lawyers and judges are not available?"

Village spoke to another family on Monday afternoon who were to be deported, and were in a police van being transported to Dublin. The mother, who suffers from a disability, was in extreme distress, and passed her mobile phone to a garda in the van. The garda said to "talk to the Press Office", refused to hand the phone back to members of the family, and hung up. (The mother was later hospitalised, and the family were not deported.)

"This is a routine procedure at this stage", said a garda spokesman, "it's part of the immigration process".p