from irishecho.com:
Saturday, August 15, 2009– Former Maze prisoner and long-time California resident Pól Brennan has been informed that he is to be deported from the United States at the end of next week.
The Department of Homeland Security’s decision was verbally relayed to Brennan on Thursday at Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas, where he has been held since his arrest in January 2008.
His lawyer Beth Feinberg said that only a “public outcry” over the unjustness of the deportation order could prevent it.
“At this point, the strongest action that can be taken is to contact Secretary Napolitano’s office at the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as legislators to try to get the message across that Pól should not be deported and should be allowed to remain in the U.S.,” Feinberg said, “particularly in light of the fact of the intent and spirit of the Good Friday Agreement was not to punish folks for political activity that occurred so long ago in Northern Ireland, and 30 years ago in Pól’s case.”
A judge ordered Brennan’s arrest in November, and his appeals were exhausted in April. Since then, the case has been in the political realm, according to his legal team.
“We have been asking both for a deferred action and a waiver of removal that would allow him to remain in the country as a lawful permanent resident based on his 20-year marriage to a U.S. citizen,” said Feinberg, a lawyer with the San Francisco firm Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale
Brennan, 56, was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the Maze Prison (also known as Long Kesh) in 1983. After leaving Ireland, he lived under an assumed name in the San Francisco area for a number of years. He was arrested in 1993, and detained while the British government sought his extradition.
After the 1998 signing of the Good Friday agreement, which Brennan supports, the British government ended its efforts to extradite him and he lived openly under his own name from that point on.
On Jan. 27 last year, while driving with his wife Joanna Volz to visit friends in Texas, Brennan was detained at an immigration checkpoint because his U.S.-issued work permit had expired. While he had applied to renew the document, authorities had not sent it to him.