Irish grandmother detained by Ice: ‘If I am the worst of the worst then America has a bigger problem than it thinks’

On her first night in Campbell County Detention Center, the Kentucky prison where she was housed with regular inmates, Donna Hughes Brown had no knowledge or experience of this new world apart from a collage of old prison film and television dramas racing through her mind. Fights and gangs and attacks and then, the cosmic disorientation of finding yourself “in there”. The same as anybody else.

“Yeah, my only thing I had to go on was the shock and awe of television shows,” she says, shaking her head.

“So, all I could think was: ‘Find the person you need to align yourself to the most.’ But it was funny because what had happened was, once those girls realised why I was there, they took me under their wing and just said: ‘This is bulls**t. We are here because we did something to be here. You did nothing.’ So, it was kind of refreshing to have that camaraderie.

“Funny story – a lot of those inmates are there for drug-related charges. And one day in the rec’ yard a new inmate came up to me and she said: ‘What are you here for?’ I said, ‘Ice.’ She said, ‘Oh, me too.’ I said ‘No, I don’t think so – I think it’s a different kind of ice [also a term by which the drug crystal meth is known] that we are both working with here’.”

Hughes Brown and her husband Jim Brown burst out laughing at this. It’s a busy lunchtime in the 54th Street Grill in Wentzville, about half an hour from their horse ranch in Troy, Missouri. Potato cheddar soup, sandwiches, pop classics on the sound system: the place is a favourite of theirs.

Both have been through the ringer after Hughes Brown was detained by immigration and customs officials at Chicago airport when returning home from Ireland last July. Both endured bleak nights, particularly in those months when her case was continually postponed, and their lives held in suspension. Brown coped by working and advocating with a kind of furious precision on his wife’s behalf, contacting senators and congressional offices until he was, at last, heard.

Seth Magaziner, the Rhode Island Democrat, took