It's easy not to notice that Belinda Brennan is almost six months pregnant. The slightly built teenager sits on her sister's couch in an innercity Dublin flat and puffs anxiously on a cigarette. People tell her she shouldn't smoke, but today she has reasons to crave chemical comfort.
Belinda's 20-year-old boyfriend, a failed Romanian asylum-seeker and the father of her unborn child, was deported this week, and for two days she had heard nothing from him.
The latest news from Marian Toader's brother is that he was left at the airport in the capital, Bucharest, with no money and dressed only in the clothes he was wearing when picked up. He managed to get the fare for the train journey home to the Transylvanian town of Sibui from the honorary Irish consul.
Belinda screamed and threw herself to the ground after up to six immigration officials and one garda turned up at her mother's flat in Summerhill last Tuesday evening and led Marian away in handcuffs. He was held in the training unit next to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin for two nights before being deported on Thursday.
"I kept saying to them `Why are you taking him? What are you doing with him?'," she recalls.
"And they wouldn't say anything. They said, `Marian, you know yourself why . . .' He kept telling them that I was his girlfriend and was expecting a baby, but they kept saying to him to get up [from the couch]," she says.
Belinda hasn't slept or eaten since. She says she doesn't know whether he got the normal series of official notices, although the authorities say they were issued. He did not appeal the rejection of his asylum claim or apply to be allowed remain in Ireland.
After the baby's birth in three months' time, Marian would be eligible to apply to remain in Ireland. The parents of Irishborn children can apply to stay on the basis that their offspring are entitled, as citizens, to be brought up by them.
A total of 2,111 asylum-seekers were allowed to stay in the State on these grounds in the first 10 months of last year. Many asylum-seekers who are granted such residency status do not continue to pursue their asylum claims.
Groups such as the Immigration Control Platform led by Ms Aine Ni Chonaill are critical of the fact that Ireland, unlike many other European countries, grants automatic citizenship to children born here to non-Irish parents.
But a Dublin solicitor, Derek Stewart, who handles many immigration cases, says the authorities are becoming more strict in their assessments of residency claims.
"Lately the Department of Justice has begun querying more whether the man is indeed the father of the child, and there have been a few cases where they have insisted, at the clients' expense, that all three present themselves for DNA tests," he says. DNA tests are done in London and cost £600 sterling for three people, according to Mr Stewart.
Belinda says she will take a blood test and is even prepared to raise the money to go to Romania to marry Marian, and then apply for him to return to Ireland with her. Her lawyers say he has a good chance of being allowed return.
Belinda has little grasp of Marian's legal status, but says they love each other and he has helped her to overcome her addiction to ecstasy and cannabis.
"He has been in Ireland for three years, and last year they told him he couldn't stay, and he was going to go to America only I persuaded him to stay for me," she says. "We were planning to get married, but we said No, just leave it. We didn't expect this to happen."
Mick Rafferty, a local community activist who is helping Belinda, says regardless of the merits of the legal case against Marian, the messy and inhumane way the deportation was carried out has done serious damage to relations between the community and gardai.
"The issue is not whether or not this guy deserved to be deported, but it was the way it was done that raises questions about the system," he says.
"Belinda's marginalised family has been supported by local gardai, and they turned to the community garda when this happened. But snatching someone away from a family which loved him could destroy that relationship with the gardai and further traumatise the family."
Mr Rafferty is the director of the Summerhill-based Community Technical Aid which offers a range of services to the community. He says some sort of formal liaison is needed between the State and the community in such cases to prevent such an incident recurring.
Immigration gardai point out that, once a deportation order is in place, they are obliged to enforce it. "Unless something official comes down to us, we can't make a decision on a case, even if there might be humanitarian issues," said an officer at the Garda National Immigration Bureau.
Yesterday afternoon Belinda sat in Mr Rafferty's office awaiting fresh word from Marian's brother in Romania.