A New Jersey federal judge has lambasted the US government's anti-terrorism policies while agreeing that she had "no choice" but to allow the deportation of a former INLA member and two of his children.
In a strongly-worded opinion, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry - a sister of billionaire mogul Donald Trump - said Malachy McAllister's conviction for conspiracy to murder an RUC officer was part of an 800-year-old struggle by the Irish people against British oppression and said that he could not possibly be considered a threat to US national security.
She appealed to US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales to intervene. "I would implore the attorney general to exercise his discretion and permit this deserving family to stay."
Judge Trump Barry said the US should consider "the 800 years of history that led Malachy to fight with his people to remove British rule and the persecution inflicted by that rule on Northern Ireland and on Malachy and his family."
She said it was a shame on the US if the words engraved under the Statue of Liberty were now meaningless.
"I refuse to believe that 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . ' is now an empty entreaty, but if it is, shame on us," she said.
Concurring with the three-judge appeal court that the McAllister family should be deported under US anti-terrorism laws, Judge Trump Barry said that she had struggled to find a way to keep the McAllister family in the United States.
"I concede. I cannot find a way to keep the McAllisters in this country and I have surely tried . . .
"Congress's definition of 'terrorist activity' sweeps in not only the big guy, but also the little guy who poses no risk to anyone. It sweeps in Malachy McAllister. Malachy's children, Seán and Nicola, are swept in, too."
The ruling appears to end legal hopes for Mr McAllister, who fled with his family to Canada and the US after loyalists fired 26 shots into his Belfast home in 1988.
However, his Belfast-born lawyer, Éamonn Dornan, said that New Jersey congressman Steven Rothman would be introducing legislation into the House of Representatives specifically to halt the McAllister family's deportation.
In deciding the case, the three-judge court agreed that existing law did not allow the McAllisters to stay in the US but differed sharply on Mr McAllister's claim that his family would be under threat if they returned to the United Kingdom.
Judge Jane Roth said that the McAllister family faced little danger of persecution in Northern Ireland. She said that the Board of Immigration Appeal was justified in ruling against the McAllisters, based on a US government report on Northern Ireland.
She noted that the report found that "Catholic nationalists, conservatives, and IRA supporters and former IRA members (even those who were convicted and sentenced for terrorist offences) were able to freely go about their lives, hold prominent positions in business, government, education and other walks of life, and participate openly in the political process and hold public office."
However, Mr Dornan said that the decision was not unexpected, given the views expressed at a hearing of the appeal court last July.
He said that a number of members of Congress are hoping to persuade the US attorney general not to proceed with the deportation, as Judge Trump Barry had implored.