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E-mailDesperate bid by ex-IRA man to stay in U.S.
Maze escapee on brink of deportation
A former IRA prisoner who escaped from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland in 1983 looks set to lose his fight against deportation.
Pol Brennan, who is currently being held in a detention center in Texas, said that he had been informed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that his appeal against deportation had failed, and that he is to be deported as soon as possible.
A supporter of Brennan’s, Katherine McCabe, said in an e-mail message on Friday that there was only a week to act to prevent the deportation.
Brennan's Web site urges people to write to the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, and ask her to not apply a part of the Immigration and Nationality that deals with terrorist-related grounds, which are being used to deport Brennan.
Brennan was arrested in Northern Ireland in 1976, and sentenced to 16 years in prison, for IRA membership and possession of explosives.
While in the Maze Prison, he joined the so-called “Dirty Protest”, and refused to wear prison clothes. At one stage, he shared a prison cell with Bobby Sands, who later died on hunger strike.
Brennan was one of the 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the Maze in September 1983. He entered the U.S. months later, and was eventually caught by the U.S authorities in Berkeley, California in 1993. That decade saw him be released on bail twice, and fight a legal battle with the authorities against his extradition, which was being sought by the British authorities.
In 2000, the British government said that it was dropping the extradition request, as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
From 2000-2006, Brennan was granted a succession of work permits, and lived in San Francisco where he worked as a carpenter.
In January 2008, while driving with his American wife Joanna Volz to visit friends in Texas, Brennan was detained at an immigration checkpoint because his work permit had expired.
Although he'd applied to renew his permit, authorities hadn't yet sent it to him by the time he was stopped. He has been in U.S. custody ever since.
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