Former IRA prisoner Pol Brennan was deported on Friday to the Republic of Ireland.

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 the next day.

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.

He was detained during the entirety of his removal proceedings, and was housed at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas from January 2008 to August 20, 2009.

Brennan's problems in the U.S. go back to 1993 when the FBI found him living under a false name in California. He had escaped from the Maze in 1983 with 37 other IRA prisoners.

In 2000, Britain dropped its extradition efforts and American authorities allowed him to stay in San Francisco while they decided what to do with him.

Unfortunately for Brennan, that arrangement came to an abrupt end when he was stopped at a routine checkpoint in Texas in 2008.

Immigration officers detained him when they discovered that his U.S. work permit had expired.
A pending renewal had not been granted at the time of his detention.

A Texas judge then ruled in November that he should be deported. Brennan's lawyers lost an appeal in April and they failed to get Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to intervene.