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Detained Derry men await deportation

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The three Derry men who were last month detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after arriving at Logan airport on a British Airways flight from London were still being detained by federal authorities this week.
The three, Donald Browne, David Curtis and Martin McCafferty, were hit with immigration fraud charges as a result of not revealing prior convictions on visa-entry waiver forms.
In the case of one of the three, Damien McCafferty, charges of conspiracy and making false statements arose as a result of his aiding Browne and Curtis in covering up prior convictions by ticking the “No” box on their visa waiver immigration forms.
All three men entered guilty pleas on one count each of “fraudulent use of a visa.”
The three were sentenced to time served and ordered deported to Ireland. Each of the three was also placed on supervised release for three years
According to a statement from the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office, at the conclusion of the Nov. 26 plea hearing “all three were taken into custody to await deportation.”
They were still waiting this week.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said that the actual processing of deportation would take “several weeks.”
The men are being held in custody in the meantime.
One of them, Browne, 44, was convicted in 1986 of murder, hijacking, unlawful possession of arms and membership in the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
According to a federal affidavit, McCafferty admitted that he had been at one time arrested and had served “six months in jail in Ireland” while Curtis told federal investigators that he had been at one time convicted in Reading Crown Court in Berkshire, England, of attempted murder.
None of the three men face any current charges but federal immigration law interprets past convictions as a basis for exclusion from the United States unless a specific waiver is granted.

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