Support groups react angrily after arrests

Immigrant groups criticised the scale and manner of yesterday's arrest operation and questioned whether human rights had been infringed in some cases.

Integrating Ireland, a network of refugee, asylum-seeker and immigrant support groups, said the extent, secrecy and lack of due process in the operation raised "serious concerns" about the implementation of Government policy.

The manner of the arrests was likely to cause "undue stress and humiliation" to those targeted, the group added.

But its spokesman, Mr Jean Pierre Eyanga, said there were also "possible discriminatory practices" involved in selecting those arrested for inability to provide identifying documentation.

Father Bobby Gilmore of the Migrant Information Centre said the authorities were simply acting on "the signal coming from Seville" where the question of immigration dominated the recent EU summit.

"But what would the Government think if the authorities in New York and Massachusetts sent 200 police out in the morning to chase down the 30,000 Irish illegals on the east coast of the US?"

Ireland's experience of emigration should make it "a flagship" for humanitarian treatment of the issue, he added. But instead of giving a lead, we were being led "by the European commercial mindset, which has no understanding of the migrant heart".

Calling the scale of yesterday's operation "definitely disproportionate to the problem here," Father Gilmore said the authorities now seemed to be taking the approach from which Irish emigrants had suffered in the UK in the 1970s and 80s.

"It used to be that if you were Irish, you were a suspect. But we seem to be getting to the stage here where if you're a migrant, you're a suspect."

The chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council, Mr Peter O'Mahony, said he accepted there had to be deportations but was "disturbed by the likelihood that something of this nature causes fear and panic within a very large community".

He added that while a small number of those whose asylum applications had failed were directly affected by the operation, "hundreds are worried that they may be targeted". He also suggested the arrests were part of a hardened policy on asylum since the election and were " a worrying trend".