'I was absolutely terrified' - Dublin teacher deported from China over ripped passport page

Jordan Donnelly (25), from Lucan, was due to board a connecting flight to Taiwan at Shanghai Pudong International Airport when he was refused entry last week.

The two friends he was travelling with were sent through while he was stopped and “refused entry” at the check-in desk.

“I was absolutely terrified” he says of the experience. “Anytime I moved somebody would scream at me. I asked three or four people who worked in the airport for help and nobody would help me”.

Jordan was held for 12 hours and was given no information as to what would happen next.

“I was absolutely freaked out and they wouldn’t give me my passport back. If they had of said it was due to whatever reason you’re not allowed in but they didn’t,” he said.

“The guy was like ‘ok you sit down there’ and they more or less refused me entry to the country.

“The passport is ripped and that’s fine but you just don’t expect something like this to happen”.

The young man, who is a secondary school teacher, had been planning the trip since March and lost out the money he spent on booking the trip.

He had flown from Dublin to Amsterdam and then onto Shanghai where he had planned to catch the final connection to Taiwan for two and a half weeks.

“Some guy comes up to me and says ‘ok lets go’. He brought me to the check in desk for KLM and they were putting me on the next flight.”

“They knew I came from Dublin initially so they were supposed to get me back there,” he says, but he was sent back to Amsterdam instead where he had to make his own way home.

He said he had flown with that passport previously and “it had never ever been an issues before” but wouldn’t be taking the risk again.