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E-mailFormer IRA prisoner Brennan deported to Republic of Ireland in shackles
Irishman says he'll remain in Republic 'for quite a while'
Former Irish political prisoner and Maze escapee Pol Brennan was shackled as he was deported on Friday to the Republic of Ireland, where he says he intends to remain “for quite a while” before deciding whether to return to Northern Ireland.
"I was shackled, hands and feet, the whole way," Brennan told the Belfast Telegraph. "And the plane was as cold as a refrigerator once we got out over the Atlantic. “You could have hung meat in that sucker. I couldn’t feel my legs for about six hours. I couldn’t sleep. How could you sleep in a refrigerator?”
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official explained that “the restraints were for officer safety and are standard procedure when deporting aliens with criminal convictions. Mr. Brennan had significant criminal convictions.”
Brennan, who had been in America since entering under an alias a year after breaking out of the Maze prison alongside 37 IRA prisoners, said the operation began at 8am Texas time on Thursday.
He said that he was first taken to a processing room at the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas. Brennan was then taken outside and put into a van and driven in a three-vehicle convoy about 28 miles to an airport at Harlingen, Texas.
The 56-year-old, who has lived in the U.S. for over 25 years, was flown to Norfolk, Virginia on a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft before continuing on to Limerick, Ireland.
Following a series of criminal convictions in Britain and the U.S., the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered that Brennan be deported from the States.
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