The estranged twin daughters of a man detained in the US have claimed he ‘abandoned’ them and called for their father to be sent home to face justice on his drugs charges.
They spoke out after ICE detainee Séamus Culleton this week appealed on RTÉ radio for the Irish Government to raise his case with US president Donald Trump so that he could return to his wife, a US citizen, and his plastering company in the Boston, Massachusetts, area.
The twins, who will turn 19 over the coming days, said Mr Culleton ‘abandoned’ them when they were just 18 months old, leaving their mother Margaret (Maggie) to raise the children herself.
In an exclusive interview with the Irish Mail on Sunday, Mr Culleton’s daughters, Melissa and Heather Morrissey, claimed that their father ‘is not the man he seems’ and said they have little sympathy for his plight.
Their father, they say, built a new life for himself in the US but never saw his own daughters in person again. Heather and Melissa claim their father is ‘not the man people think he is’ and said his claim that he has done ‘no wrong’ is false.
The two young women said their mother has not received ‘a penny’ in child maintenance from Mr Culleton since he ‘abandoned’ them.
Heather told the MoS: ‘I think he should come back here and he should get arrested.’
The twins said their father was naive for going public with his case, knowing he has outstanding drugs charges against him in Ireland.
Mr Culleton, who is from Glenmore in Co. Kilkenny, compared the conditions of the detention centre where he is being held to that of a ‘concentration camp’ and said that he feared for his safety.
Our sister paper, the Irish Daily Mail, revealed this week that Mr Culleton was charged with several offences in 2008.
These included possessing drugs with intent for sale or supply, possession of drugs for personal consumption and obstructing a garda in the course of their duty.
Mr Culleton failed to appear at New Ross District Court for his hearing and a bench warrant was requested. However, the warrant was never issued as he had left the jurisdiction.
He also appeared in the same court in April 2008 for being ‘extremely drunk’ in public. Court reports from the time noted gardaí detained him for his own safety.
Heather said: ‘He was making himself out to be a saint like he’s done nothing wrong, like he knows that there are warrants here for his arrest and that was going to come out.
‘How did he not know that? He went to the news. People [can] go and find this… It’s public knowledge.’
The twins said they were in disbelief when they heard their father’s voice on the radio.
Mr Culleton called RTÉ’s Liveline programme on Monday.
Heather added: ‘I was shocked. I am sorry now but I just think it’s so funny how he can ring the news and Tiffany [Culleton’s wife] and his sister but couldn’t ring me or my sister.
‘He rang me the first day he got locked up because I asked his sister to ask him to ring me. I had to ask him to ring me.
‘He told me that he got detained by ICE… he doesn’t know when he’s going to get out. That was about it. I haven’t heard from him since then.’
Heather said she texted her father’s sister to let him know that Melissa was pregnant, but still there was no contact: ‘My sister hasn’t heard from him.’
Heather added: ‘I feel that we were born and he just up and left. He did abandon us. That’s what he did.’
She said the twins were told their father was Séamus Culleton when they were 12 years old.
They looked him up on Facebook and began messaging him.
But Heather said: ‘He never tried adding us or anything like that on Facebook. Then me and Melissa made it our own business then to add him. When we added him, we waited.
‘We then texted him and basically said, “You never reached out, and we never heard from you” and all that kind of stuff,’ she said.
‘He just said that he thought we wouldn’t want to hear from him and all that kind of just silly stuff, really. And then we got afraid, in case our mom would see it on our phone. So we just blocked him.’
Heather said the twins reached out to their father again when they were 15 or 16, and that there were some infrequent online conversations.
‘He’d be texting on and off, he’d be texting, “how are you” and all this. He asked us if we were coming to see him and then I asked him if he was going to come over to see us instead, instead of us going all the way over there, and he said “no” and that he was never coming back here.’
Melissa said their father ‘gave us €1,000 each’ for the twins’ 18th birthday last year, but ‘only because we contacted him first and asked for a birthday present as a joke’.
The sisters said they were very upset when a fundraising campaign – which has so far raised more than $30,000 (€25,000) – to pay for his legal fees was launched.
They also said they felt hurt by comments made by Mr Culleton’s American wife Tiffany Smyth on TikTok, where she said she wanted Séamus to come home to her and her ‘babies’, referring to the couple’s dogs.
Heather said: ‘She posted a TikTok saying that she wanted their dad to come home to his kids.
‘They’re dogs. I understand people love animals and all that, but he has children. His dogs aren’t his children.’
Referring to the money raised for her father’s GoFundMe campaign, Mellissa said: ‘That’s nearly child maintenance money. Like, you know, they’re taking the p*** out of people.’
The young women also told how a relative of their father contacted them after they posted on Tiffany’s TikTok that he had real children, and not just dogs.
Heather said she was shocked when the relative said their existence could hurt their father’s case.
‘So then [Culleton’s relative] comes down my phone and was telling me to delete the comment that I am ruining his chances of getting out of ICE detention centre, wherever he is, and that I should take it down and that I don’t understand.’
Melissa added: ‘I feel the exact same as Heather, that I’m just hurt by what they said up on the news, and I just think that he’s scandalous and that he should come home.
‘He just made us basically out, like we’re just like two pieces of s***.’
Mr Culleton has pleaded with the Government to help him get out of the detention facility and has claimed the conditions where he is being detained amount to ‘torture’.
He said this week: ‘I’d love for you guys to just try to get me out here. Do all you can please. It’s absolute torture, psychological torture, physical torture.
‘I just want to get back to my wife. We were so desperate to start a family,’ he said.
‘My mother, especially, is heartbroken that I’m in here. She’s just heartbroken over the whole situation.,’ he said.
Despite refusing to sign deportation documentation, and posting a $4,000 (€3,400) bond, Mr Culleton has remained at the detention centre in El Paso, Texas, for almost five months.
‘There is no quality of life here,’ he said. ‘I’ve been locked in the same room for the last four–and–a–half months. I can count on one have how many times I’ve been let outside.’
However, in a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said Mr Culleton received full due process and was issued a final deportation order from a federal judge.
She
said: ‘On September 9, 2025, ICE arrested Séamus Culleton, an illegal alien from Ireland. ‘He entered the United States in 2009 under the visa waiver program, which allows you to stay in the US for 90 days without a visa.
‘He failed to depart the US.
‘He received full due process and was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on September 10, 2025.
‘He was offered the chance to instantly be removed to Ireland but chose to stay in ICE custody. In fact, he took affirmative steps to remain in detention.’
Ms McLaughlin said Mr Culleton’s continued detention is ‘his choice’. adding ‘Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to use the CBP [Customs and Border Protection ] Home app to take control of their departure.
‘The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 (€2,200) and a free flight to self–deport now.
‘We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the US the right legal way to live the American dream.
‘If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.’
