Former IRA militant fights deportation in S. Texas (AP c/o Fox News)

Former IRA militant fights deportation in S. Texas
Monday, November 10, 2008

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A former IRA militant and escaped political prisoner who has lived in immigration limbo for 25 years in California may see it all unravel from inside a South Texas federal detention center.

Pol Brennan, convicted member of the Irish Republican Army and escapee from a notorious prison outside Belfast, was nabbed with an expired work permit in South Texas in January. He has been detained ever since, awaiting a hearing Wednesday and Thursday on whether he'll finally earn legal residency or be deported to Northern Ireland, where his wife says he'll face retaliation.

Brennan's situation is so muddied that questions of why he would be deported now after 25 years are balanced by the marvel that he was not sent home years ago for sneaking into the country under an assumed name. He had brushes with the law in the U.S. before his arrest in Texas, but was able to renew work permits without becoming a permanent legal resident.

Since coming to America, Brennan married and worked as a master carpenter, bought a gun under an assumed name, once applied for a passport, also with an assumed name, and was convicted of misdemeanor assault for scuffling with a contractor who he claimed owed him money.

Immigration officials won't comment on his case, citing the upcoming hearing. But Brennan's case has drawn attention, especially within the Irish-American community. Supporters have run a petition drive, raised money for his defense and recruited a bipartisan trio of congressmen who wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this summer supporting Brennan's request for bond.

Brennan, 55, a short man with wire glasses, gray goatee and love of political theory, wears a professorial air.

His Web site offers writings and radio interviews in which he rails against the bad food, guards, restrictions on reading material and what he sees as racist immigration policies.

Brennan was caught with an expired work permit in January while he and his wife, Joanna Volz, were driving to Austin from South Padre Island, where they had visited Volz's mother.

U.S. Border Patrol agents at the Sarita checkpoint ran Brennan through the computer and found: His conviction and 16-year prison sentence in 1977 in Belfast for possession of explosives; the infamous 1983 escape from the maximum security Maze Prison outside Belfast with 37 others; and his 1993 arrest by the FBI in Berkeley, Calif., after he had applied for a passport using an assumed name.

"They started getting really agitated and excited," Brennan told The Associated Press from the Willacy County Detention Center. "Like they were on to something. It was kind of comical."

Two days later Border Patrol announced its agents had captured an international fugitive. But Brennan had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1984, and his wife says he hadn't been hard to find.

"If I was an FBI agent (looking for Brennan and other Maze escapees) I would just go to a big Irish bar and look for who never had to buy his drinks," Volz said.

Brennan's 1993 arrest kicked off what became a 7-year fight against extradition to Great Britain. It ended when Britain dropped its extradition request, citing Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday accord, which called for the accelerated release of the conflict's political prisoners.

Ever since, Brennan and about 15 other former IRA prisoners, who made their home in the United States, have lived in a legal limbo. Even though they entered the country illegally, they can renew their work permits but have not been able to get permanent immigration status. Brennan's requests for political asylum and a green card are pending.

At his hearing this week, Brennan plans to argue that the extradition would cause hardship for his wife _ she quit her job to be near him in Texas _ and that he could face potentially violent grudges in Northern Ireland.