As trial opens, supporters rally for McAllisters

By Michael Washburn

Malachy McAllister is the kind of man this country is better off with than without. That, at least, is the view of several dozen supporters who turned out at a benefit at Rory Dolan’s Bar and Restaurant in Yonkers on Friday night to protest the move by the INS to deport McAllister.

The benefit came just days before a court hearing into the McAllister family’s plea for political asylum in the U.S.

The trial of the case opened Monday at the federal immigration court in Newark, New Jersey. It is expected to continue all this week, adjourn for two months, and resume in mid-August.

In a development described as "exceptional" by the McAllister legal team, an armed and uniformed INS officer stood guard at the door of the courtroom as the trial opened.

At the outset, McAllister’s attorneys also protested the loss of a defense witness, an officer in the U.S. army who had been lined up to counter testimony of another officer being called by the Immigiration and Naturalization Service to testify on the rules of war.

In the opening phase, the INS is expected to call on Paul Wilkinson, an expert on security and terrorism and a onetime adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Wilkinson is expected to testify that the Royal Ulster Constabulary is a civilian police force and therefore not a legitimate target in an armed conflict.

Malachy McAllister and his family fled Belfast at the end of the 1980s after shots came through a window of his home in an assassination attempt. Denied the right to live in Canada because of his record of trouble with the RUC, McAllister brought his family to the U.S. in 1996. Though they have lived here since then, an immigration judge has found that Malachy McAllister is a British citizen, that life in Northern Ireland is not so risky anymore, and that he must go back while his family applies for asylum.

On Friday night, while the band The Wolfe Tones belted out songs on the stage at Rory Dolan’s, McAllister, his wife, Bernadette, and two of their children mixed with friends and supporters. Far more than an array of organizers and activists, the benefit boasted a mixed crowd that attested to the wide grassroots support for the family. While not without its political and legal concerns, the event was personal in spirit.

It was clear that many felt that while the INS has been justly criticized for laxity in the screening of immigrants, Malachy McAllister is the right kind of immigrant — hardworking and affable. This was the view voiced by Tony Creaney, a native of Belfast who came to the U.S. in 1949, served as an NYPD officer for just short of 25 years, and lives in the Bronx to this day. Apart from having brothers back in Belfast, he has gotten to know McAllister well and finds him to be outgoing and charming.

The sentiment was echoed even by those who did not know McAllister. Supporter Ed Hague, highly visible in his McAllister campaign T-shirt and buttons, said he had made the trip from Long Island to Yonkers after hearing stories about Malachy and his family on the radio. The reason he gave for his support was simple enough. "This is a guy we don’t want to throw out," he said.

But an even more common sentiment was sympathy for the plight of the family, at risk of being split up by the coming court ruling.

"Anyone who has any sense of humanity should be outraged," said Desmond McWeeney. A similar view came from Megan Kiernan, the girlfriend of Gary McAllister, who narrowly survived the 1988 assassination attempt at the age of 11. Putting politics aside, she said that "anyone who has a family can understand" why Malachy should not undergo forced deportation.

To be sure, the event had its political nuances. One guest who would not give his name said he was there because he felt that President Clinton had done plenty of good in Ireland but not a lot of good in New York, where Irish people are still facing trial and deportation.

But the case is not just of concern to those who care about Irish issues, but also to those who care about human rights in general. Echoing Amnesty International’s concern for the McAllisters, guest Elizabeth McCall said she would hate to see the family split up.

"It’s a human rights issue for me," she said, adding that "it wouldn’t matter which side they were on," whether nationalist or unionist, Catholic or Protestant.

There was fear that the warm view of Malachy and his family and the concern about their welfare held by so many might not add up to much in the eyes of the authorities trying the case. According to Martin Galvin, a lawyer who has tried a number of deportation cases, the McAllister case is of a piece with others in which the INS and the courts have bowed to what they saw as Britain’s best interests.

Scott Turner, a member of the McAllister campaign’s leadership committee, offered a different view, saying in a speech that the authorities were pursuing their vindictive policy toward the McAllisters because "they think you [the public] want this to happen." To judge from the views of those present at Rory Dolan’s on June 9 — whether they knew the McAllisters or not — nothing could be further from the truth.

(Ray O’Hanlon contributed to this story.)