BACKGROUND:Though he is an Irish citizen, Xiaowei Guo was arrested for failing to produce a passport
WHEN A traffic garda stopped Xiaowei Guo in his car in Dublin city centre in November 2008, he didn’t think much of it. He’d never been in trouble with the Garda and, as an Irish citizen, felt he had nothing to fear from the police.
“He asked me to produce my passport and said he suspected I was in breach of immigration law. When I told him I was an Irish citizen and left my passport at home, he didn’t believe me,” says Guo, who arrived in Ireland in 1997 and acquired citizenship in 2003. Guo was arrested for failing to produce a valid passport or other equivalent documents. He was brought to Kevin Street station and detained for three hours until his wife brought his passport to prove his identity.
“It was very humiliating being arrested in rush hour in Dublin city centre. I had worked 10 hours that day and was tired. I asked the garda to come to my house, just three blocks away. He wouldn’t agree and my wife had to travel back from Dún Laoghaire to give the garda the passport,” he says.
“When I left the station the Garda told me not to waste their time and carry my passport on me all the time or face arrest again,” says Guo, who was so angry about his treatment he complained to the Garda Ombudsman.
The ombudsman found the officer had “not been found in breach of discipline as he justified the arrest stating that he had formed a reasonable suspicion at the time that Mr Guo was a non-national”. Under section 12 of the Immigration Act, 2004, non-Irish nationals can face criminal conviction if they fail to produce a passport or equivalent ID on demand to a garda or immigration officer without “a satisfactory explanation”.
Figures compiled by the CSO show the number of people convicted for failing to produce ID was three in 2005, 144 in 2006, 250 in 2007 and 291 in 2008.
There is no data available on the number of Irish or EU citizens asked to produce ID on demand under the Act, or detained at Garda stations. But immigrant and civil rights groups say the draconian nature of section 12 of the 2004 Act has left Irish citizens open to ethnic profiling on the basis of different skin colour.
“We have identified ethnic profiling as a serious problem in Ireland and are very glad the High Court have addressed it. No Irish citizen is required to carry ID and so the requirement of ‘non-nationals’ to produce ID on demand is discriminatory,” said Siobhán O’Donoghue of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland.
“How is a garda or immigration officer to know someone is a citizen or not, and based on our study [they] are clearly making judgments based on colour, accent and appearance,” she said.
The decision by Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns to rule section 12 of the 2004 Act unconstitutional means the Garda can no longer rely on this mechanism to demand presentation of ID on threat of conviction. The Department of Justice said last night it was studying the implications, and whether it should appeal.
It is understood justice officials believe other legal instruments may be used as a basis to demand presentation of ID by non-Irish nationals.