FOLLOWING the apparent failure of his last-ditch attempt to have US homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano grant him a deportation waiver, Maze escapee Pol Brennan has been told that he will be sent back to Ireland by the end of the week.
Mr Brennan (56), who is being held at the Port Isabel immigration detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas, was informed of the decision on Thursday. His supporters have launched an 11th-hour bid to ask members of Congress to intervene on his behalf.
The Belfast native has been in custody since January 2008, when he was detained at a Texas immigration checkpoint over a lapsed US work permit. While he had submitted his renewal forms on time, officials hadn’t sent him a new one by the time of his detention.
Last November, after an immigration hearing, a Texas judge ordered Mr Brennan deported in part because he had testified that he’d occasionally moved explosives for the IRA in the mid-1970s.
Judge William Peterson also cited Mr Brennan’s illegal 1984 entry into America, his 1995 conviction for purchasing a targeting pistol using an alias, and a 2005 misdemeanour assault conviction stemming from a dispute with a building contractor.
Mr Brennan lost an appeal of that ruling in April, and was scheduled for deportation on May 18th.
His lawyer then petitioned Ms Napolitano to stay his removal deportation due to the “extreme hardship” it will cause Joanna Volz, his 63-year-old American wife, who is primary caregiver for her 87-year-old mother in Texas.
Speaking to The Irish Times from Seattle, where she’s visiting her grandchildren, Joanna Volz said that she is stunned the small issue of a delayed work permit has her husband on the verge of deportation.
“In Ireland there has been a peace agreement and (prisoners) on both sides had been sent home,” she added “and incarcerating Pol was just absolutely against the sprit of that agreement. That’s why we were just totally surprised by this decision.”
Having just driven 2,000 miles from Texas, Ms Volz said that she won’t even have time to make it back before his scheduled deportation.
“I actually won’t see Pol again until he’s in Ireland, and I can get a passport, and get time off from work,” said Ms Volz.
In 1977, Mr Brennan was sentenced to 16 years in jail after being caught with explosives while armed with a gun in Belfast. He joined 37 IRA prisoners in escaping the Maze in September 1983.
The FBI arrested him living under an alias in Berkeley, California a decade later.
In 2000, Britain dropped its efforts to have him extradited back to Northern Ireland, and the US then gave him permission to live and work in California until the courts decided his residency status.
Ms Volz told The Irish Timesthat the couple had been cautiously optimistic about his chances of remaining in America after the Good Friday agreement.
“ . . . I think that was mostly based on the realities of the Good Friday agreement, that many people involved were being released back to their communities, that essentially the war was over,” said Ms Volz.
“It was certainly over for us and Pol’s family in Ireland. And we thought that it would stay that way.”
Ms Volz said that her husband’s deportation could have a devastating impact on their marriage.
“It’s been pretty grim. The reason I’m in Seattle is because that’s where my children live, my grandchildren live, my friends are in California,” added Ms Volz.
“I have responsibilities here. If Pol ends up going to Ireland, I can’t quite see how we’re going to do it.”