February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
But Brennan has vowed to make one last bid to remain in the United States together with his American citizen wife. He will make a direct appeal to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.
Brennan told the Echo in a phone call from prison on Tuesday that the Board of Immigration Appeals had turned down his appeal.
“They indicated that they would move to deport me as soon as possible,” he said.
But any move to deport would be stopped by an appeal to Napolitano. Such a move would also shift the Brennan case squarely into the political arena.
“It’s my last chance,” said Brennan who supports the Good Friday Agreement.
He said that he and his support and legal team would be organizing a campaign to have people write Napolitano and congressional politicians on his behalf.
Late last November, a federal immigration judge ruled that Maze escapee Brennan should be deported from the U.S.
The ruling was handed down the day after Thanksgiving.
The 55-year-old Brennan was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from Long Kesh prison in 1983. He fled to the U.S. and lived for a time under a false name in the San Francisco area.
Brennan’s bid for at least bail has been unsuccessful since he was detained, this despite support from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and three U.S. congressmen who sent a letter to Napolitano’s predecessor, Michael Chertoff, urging release on bond pending resolution of deportation proceedings.
On January 27 last year, while driving with Joanna Volz, his American wife of 20 years, 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.
For nearly six months, Brennan was held at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, on the Texas Gulf Coast. A day before Hurricane Dolly hit on July 23, he and hundreds of other immigrant detainees were evacuated to a prison in New Mexico. Brennan was later sent back to Texas and is currently incarcerated at Port Isabel.