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Detained Derry men behind bars for Christmas

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The three, Donald Browne, David Curtis and Damien McCafferty, were detained after arriving at Logan airport on a British Airways flight from London. Their stated reason for visiting the U.S. was to attend a wedding. The three were hit with immigration fraud charges as a result of not revealing prior convictions on visa-entry waiver forms.
All three are being held in detention pending deportation. They were still being held Tuesday as the Echo went to press.
“All three are still in custody,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
The spokeswoman would not comment on a report in an Irish newspaper that the three men were subjected to a strip search after being arrested.
In a joint letter to their families, the three said that when they were first arrested they were handcuffed and shackled everywhere they went.
According to the Derry Journal, they also said that they were “searched, photographed and fingerprinted six times in 48 hours.”
The letter stated that the three were also subjected to a strip search.
“We have been treated unfairly because we are Irish. Bin Laden would not have got the treatment we are getting,” the Journal reported the men as saying in their letter.
“We have been told that we could be held here from anything from three months to three years. We have guys here who have been held for four years,” the men added.
“It’s something we don’t want to hear, we want to be home for Christmas.”
In the case of one of the three men, 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.
At a Nov. 26 hearing, 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 plea hearing, “all three were taken into custody to await deportation.”
That wait could now drag on into the New Year.
One of three, Donald 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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