US Senator Ed Markey (L) and Seamus Culleton.

Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey is calling for the release of Seamus Culleton, the Kilkenny man who has been in ICE custody since being arrested in a Boston suburb in September.

Culleton was detained despite having a valid work permit he received as part of his green card application made with his American wife. The Irish man made international headlines this week when he described the conditions at the ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas as "a modern-day concentration camp."

On Thursday, Senator Markey wrote on social media: "I am calling on ICE to immediately release Seamus Culleton.

"It is appalling that Seamus has remained in detention for 5 months in dire conditions, away from his family.

"As a spouse of a U.S. citizen with strong Massachusetts ties, there is no justification for keeping him detained.

"Release him now."

Markey's grandparents and great-grandparents were Irish immigrants, and he regularly aligns himself with Irish interests. A Democrat, Markey served in the House of Representatives for more than three decades before becoming a Senator in 2013.

In Ireland on Wednesday, Social Democrats Senator Patricia Stephenson told RTÉ News that she had been put in contact with Senator Markey in order to get "direct in-country representation" for Culleton.

Stephenson said in a statement two days earlier that Culleton has been "subject to human rights abuses – including limited access to food, being held in filthy cells with up to 70 other men, and severely restricted access to outside space" while in ICE detention.

She said Culleton's family told her that "consulate support has not been forthcoming, which is why they have been forced to go public with his case."

She called for Culleton's situation to be a "national priority."

Taoiseach Micheal Martin told the Dáil this week that Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs has been aware of Culleton's situation since October and "engaging with Homeland Security through the Consulate General in Austin and the Embassy in Washington."

He later added: "We do not have the authority to interfere in the application of law, but we do have the capacity to advocate strongly on behalf of our citizens to ensure that they are properly and humanely treated.

"We are conscious that this happened is in the middle of an application for status. We do not want to do anything that would undermine the securing of that status for Seamus Culleton."

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Elsewhere on Thursday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slammed Culleton's description of the ICE facility where he's detained in Texas.

"How gross," the DHS said in a post on its official social media on Thursday evening.

"Calling detention facilities a 'concentration camp,' yet this individual (who was in our country illegally for 16 years) CHOSE to stay in detention for 5 months after he was issued a final deportation order and given full due process.

"Being in detention is a CHOICE — we encourage every illegal alien to take advantage of the CBP Home app to self-deport and have the opportunity to come back to our nation the RIGHT way."

The DHS post echoed one issued by Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS, posted on her personal X account on Wednesday, in which she said: "Being in detention is a choice."

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The DHS post made no mention of how, before his arrest, Culleton had begun his green card application with his American wife and how, as part of the application, USCIS had approved his Employment Authorization Document (EAD), commonly known as a work permit.

Culleton was scheduled for his marriage-based green card interview, typically the last step in the application process, in November and December, but USCIS denied requests for him to appear telephonically from custody.

Culleton's lawyer Ogor Winnie Okoye highlighted in a statement on Wednesday night: "Historically, US immigration law and policy have recognized the importance of family unity and have permitted immediate relatives of US citizens to adjust their immigration status even when they have overstayed a visa. USCIS policy memos and guidance support the approval of marriage-based adjustment applications filed by VWP entrants, and DHS has routinely exercised favorable discretion in such cases, including cases like Culleton’s where a marriage-based adjustment application is already pending."