Smears and threats against lawyers representing people seeking asylum ramp up

Over the weekend, an anonymous X account, which has repeatedly posted about lawyers representing those seeking asylum, shared a spreadsheet of firms involved in asylum cases. 

It would review them more deeply in the coming weeks, one post said. 

What exactly that means is unclear. But negative posts targeting those who represent people seeking asylum in Ireland have been ramping up, say lawyers working in the sector. 

Targeting of immigration lawyers is becoming normalised elsewhere, too.

Last year, the Metropolitan Police warned these lawyers to “take extra security measures or stay away from work amid far-right threats to target their firms”, according to the Guardian. 

Here, the Law Society of Ireland says it stands firmly behind all lawyers who are the target of efforts to intimidate, threaten or incite attacks on them just for doing their jobs, a spokesperson said.  

Those behind it must be held accountable, they said. “Solicitors play a vital role in the administration of justice and any threat to them is an attack on the legal rights of every person,” said the Law Society spokesperson. 

 Everybody deserves to turn to a lawyer in search of justice, no matter who they are or where they’re from, they said.

“Access to justice is a basic entitlement of every person in this country,” they said.

Error helps with targeting

For years, the Courts Service has been publishing the names of some people who’d sought asylum – by mistake, a spokesperson said.

This is against the law. Under Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015, the names of people who’ve sought asylum can’t be published without their consent.

A spokesperson for the Courts Service said this month that it has revised its processes to make sure this won’t happen again – and has wiped the names. 

Already, though, the names have been used to help identify lawyers representing people seeking asylum. 

In the early hours of Friday morning, one anonymous account that had flagged asylum cases from the Courts Service website wrote that it had deleted posts showing asylum seekers’ names, out of “abundance of caution”.

Then, in a follow-up all-caps post, it uploaded a screenshot of a fragment of a spreadsheet, in which it seemed to have stored names of law firms that it said had brought cases against the asylum appeals tribunal in the past.

The post had been framed as a “NOTICE”.

In the comments, some called those lawyers “ambulance chasers” and implied they make a ton of money. “Their mortifying behaviour would be corrected!” said another response.

The anonymous account posted the list again and again and again throughout the weekend, pointing out that the names were no longer on the Courts Service website – “Would you just look at that?” – and showing a spreadsheet with a list of firms beside it.

“Good job that they were all saved here beforehand,” it wrote.

The list was reposted and circulated on X by its followers over and over. 

Obsession 

The anonymous account has posted about Cathal Malone, an immigration barrister, with persistence, sharing a tangle of grievances, as Malone often accepts media interviews. 

Its posts usually imply something sinister about him or claim, without evidence, that his knowledge of asylum law is flawed. And that there’s something suspicious about the fact that the media chats to him, often. 

Some of the anonymous posts feature a selfie of Malone with his romantic partner, solicitor Wendy Lyon, smiling on a night out, lifted from Lyon’s personal BlueSky account. 

Another post about Malone from 15 July shows the name of one of his law firm’s clients, screenshotted from the Courts Service website. (Malone said in a text message that the case doesn’t involve anyone with an asylum background.)

“Junior barrister & critic of govt clampdown on asylum, Cathal Malone is the ‘head of research’ at Thomas Coughlan,” the post said, alongside the selfie of Lyon and Malone.

In a thread from April, it posted an image of Malone and all the solicitors working at his law firm from its website. The thread features a solo image of Lyon, too.

Malone has said in the past that people targeting him call up his law firm and harass the staff sometimes.

In a crime-prevention information sheet focused on online harassment, An Garda Síochána mentions persistence as a hallmark of bullying.

“It is widely agreed to be behaviour that is sustained or repeated over time and has a serious negative effect on the well-being of the victim and is generally a deliberate series of actions,” it says.

Who I am and what I do

Lawyers of colour are also a target for anti-immigrant accounts.

In August 2024, emailed threats against Imran Khurshid, an immigration lawyer born in Pakistan, got so bad that Sinn Féin’s then-spokesperson on justice issued a statement in condemnation.

“We in Ireland know all too well about attacks on lawyers such as Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson,” said Pa Daly TD, at the time.

He said it’s “pathetic” when a cowardly anonymous person calls themselves patriotic. 

Khurshid’s membership of Fianna Fáil is also sometimes used to promote the idea that the government is trying to replace White people with immigrants of colour.

By phone on Friday, Khurshid said he’d gone to the Gardaí about death threats that were emailed to him last year.

He says nothing much happened except that they told him the emails weren’t sent from Ireland. “So maybe some of it is coming from foreign elements,” he said.

Even now, he avoids strolling alone in the city, he said.

“I always look over my shoulder. I don’t feel safe, not just as an immigration lawyer but also as an immigrant,” said Khurshid.

Worth doing 

Stephen Kirwan, a solicitor at KOD Lyons, says the narrative that asylum lawyers are on some “gravy train” makes him laugh.

“I could easily make more money doing family law, or employment law, or corporate transactions,” he said.

He said it can be stressful and emotionally draining to work on asylum cases, but it’s also interesting, and he loves his job.

That the Legal Aid Board’s fees for overworked lawyers sitting on its external asylum panel are low is not a secret, says Kirwan, a member of that panel.

The rates are available online for everyone to see for themselves, he said.

If anyone is still not convinced, they can dig deeper by submitting Freedom of Information (FOI) requests or parliamentary questions through their TDs, said Kirwan.

Internal Legal Aid Board records show that in September 2024, its officials had said it might need to raise fees for these lawyers to attract more of them in preparation for the incoming Pact on Migration and Asylum, which processes asylum cases at a much faster pace. 

When someone gets a negative decision on their asylum claim and challenges that in the High Court, the Legal Aid Board doesn’t cover that, says Albert Llussà, partner and solicitor at Daly Lynch Crowe & Morris Solicitors.

When Llussà takes those on, he’s either doing it pro bono because they have a decent shot to win or “the applicant is in employment and has access to funds and makes a contribution”, he said.

Kirwan says those cases he’s taking on for free are genuine injustices he hopes to correct. 

Many lawyers don’t want to practice asylum law because it’s demanding work that doesn’t pay well, Kirwan says.

But, he says, “I happen to really enjoy the work that I do.” 

No amount of posting by faceless figures on X can stop him from representing people seeking safety here, Kirwan says. “It’s work worth doing.”

Llussà says he’s aware that lawyers like him are maligned at the moment. But he mostly worries about his clients who face serious threats to their safety, he said.

Just recently, one of them was assaulted outside her asylum centre. “She was punched,” he said.

The International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) had to transfer her elsewhere, and it’s been reported to the Gardaí, said Llussà.