Thread: Former IRA detainee scheduled for deportation

Former IRA detainee scheduled for deportation

by CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, The Associated Press
1:48 p.m. August 14, 2009

McALLEN, Texas — A former IRA militant who lived in the United States for 25 years before being detained by Border Patrol in January 2008 is scheduled to be deported to Ireland in one week.

Pol Brennan, 56, has spent 17 months in immigration detention centers while fighting to stay in the United States. His lawyers had appealed to the Department of Homeland Security in May for a stay of removal and deferred action.

Joanna Volz, Brennan's wife said he called her Thursday from the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in South Texas with the news.
"We're both pretty stunned," Volz said. "We were hoping something good would come of this."

Volz said she was preparing to e-mail friends urging them to write to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Nina Pruneda, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would not comment on individual cases.

A U.S. immigration judge ordered Brennan deported in late November. He is scheduled to be deported to Ireland next Friday aboard a U.S. government plane, Volz said. Brennan is from West Belfast, Northern Ireland, and holds an Irish passport.

Beth Feinberg, one of Brennan's immigration attorneys, said she had not received the formal decision yet but word had been passed to Brennan that he would be deported.

Brennan testified at a hearing in November in the Willacy County Detention Center that he transported what he believed were explosives between drop-off points in Belfast for the Irish Republican Army on about six occasions. It was on one of those runs in 1976 that he was arrested and sentenced to 16 years in The Maze prison, from which he escaped with 37 others in 1983. Brennan stressed that while he supported the IRA, he was not a sworn member of the group.

The federal government was familiar with Brennan's past but consistently renewed his work permits. It was only when he essentially fell into their laps with an expired work permit that immigration authorities acted.

The FBI arrested Brennan in Berkeley, Calif., in 1993 after he applied for a passport using an alias. That touched off a seven-year fight against extradition, during which Brennan spent about four years in jail. Great Britain dropped its extradition demand in 2000 and Brennan was allowed to stay in the U.S., albeit with a murky immigration status. He worked as a carpenter in northern California's San Francisco Bay area.

In January, Brennan and Volz were on their way from South Padre Island to Austin to see friends when they stopped at the inland Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita.

Brennan told the agents he was not a U.S. citizen. When they saw his work permit had expired – he had applied for but not received an annual renewal – they ran his name in the computer and saw his unusual history. He has been locked up ever since. Volz left her job in the public defender's office in San Francisco and moved to Port Isabel.

At his hearing in November, Brennan had asked the judge to consider granting him political asylum due to reprisals he said he could face in Northern Ireland, or permanent residency taking into account his 1989 marriage to Volz.

Brennan was convicted of making a fraudulent passport application and using an alias when buying a pistol in his early days in California.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... dex=149570

At his hearing in November, Brennan had asked the judge to consider granting him political asylum due to reprisals he said he could face in Northern Ireland, or permanent residency taking into account his 1989 marriage to Volz.

Brennan was convicted of making a fraudulent passport application and using an alias when buying a pistol in his early days in California.

One illegal aliens, there are more. Stop paying for anchor babies by giving no citizenship to child without one parent being American.

I don't care where anyone is from, deport them. This guy worked with the IRA and spent time in prison, came here illegally, lied to get a job, lied to get a passport. Another fine up-standing citizen-to-be when amnesty comes around.

Brennan was convicted of making a fraudulent passport application and using an alias when buying a pistol in his early days in California.

This is not the kind of person we want in our country.