The Jimmy’s Hall Today assembly will address the realities of the deportation system as it operates in Ireland today. For every person who comes to Ireland seeking refuge, the fear of deportation is deep.

The assembly will include testimonies from international protection applicants and their supporters on how Department of Justice policy and procedures deeply affect their lives. It will also address the changes to detention and deportation procedures introduced by the International Protection Act 2016. Jimmy’s Hall Today will feature dance, music and performance in the spirit of Gralton’s vision.

The assembly will be introduced by Paul Gralton, Jimmy’s grand-nephew: ‘I listened to my grandmother expressing the hope she had for her cousin Jimmy’s return. I think of Alice Gralton’s plea to Leitrim councillors in 1933 to stop the deportation of her son. It would make a stone cry. We are a nation well experienced in the pain of emigration. Yet today we perpetrate a totally inhuman system in our treatment of those fleeing appalling violence and persecution, those seeking to better themselves and those caught in the web of movement’.

Jimmy’s Hall Today is hosted by the Abbey Theatre, convened by MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland) and Afri.

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