February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Ferry has been held without bail since Jan. 30 after attending a green-card interview with his U.S. citizen wife, Heaven Ferry. He has spent most of that time in solitary confinement.
Ferry was questioned at the interview about a prison term he served in Northern Ireland for IRA-related activities in the early 1990s. He was released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday agreement but did not reveal that he had been in prison when he first entered the U.S.
Ferry, who is 31, was detained at the interview by immigration officers. He is facing a deportation order but countered with the asylum plea. That plea was heard Aug. 22 before immigration Judge James Vandello.
Ferry’s detention was specifically based on a charge that he had overstayed his U.S. visa. His attorney has countered that he had in fact obtained labor authorization and was permitted an extended stay in the U.S. pending his green-card interview.
The Ferrys have a 2-year-old daughter, Fiona. The couple had lived in Belfast for a time but decided to settle in Colorado after Ciaran Ferry’s name was found by police on a loyalist death list.
Ferry attended the day-long asylum hearing that included the submission to the court of a series of affidavits from activists, writers and lawyers in Northern Ireland in support of his plea. Oral testimony was also given by his wife and his father, Gerry Ferry.
“When Mr. Ferry walked into the courtroom, it was immediately apparent that his physical condition has deteriorated significantly since his last hearing in
May,” said Deanna Turner of the Irish American Unity Conferenc, who attended the hearing. “I was aghast at his extremely pale complexion and frail physical condition.”
Ferry has opted against being housed with the general population in Denver County Jail arguing that he is not a criminal.
During the hearing, Ferry stated that the FBI had offered to have him freed from jail if he gave information but that he had declined in part on the grounds that such a move would endanger his relatives in the North.
Ferry’s argument that his immediate family would also be in danger from loyalists should they have to quit the U.S. was rejected during the hearing by Scott Johns, an attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security.
“I hope the court recognizes my convictions were of a political nature and that the court recognizes I have done nothing wrong in the U.S.,” the Rocky Mountain News reported Ferry as saying in court.
The same paper, in an editorial, rejected Ferry’s claim that his IRA action were political and not criminal.
“On the contrary, Ferry was no freedom fighter. He was what his sentencing judge described as a member of an IRA assassination squad, caught red-handed and arrested in 1993 and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder,” the editorial stated.
Taking a broader view, the editorial concluded that the war against terrorism “will be meaningless unless government more scrupulously checks the status of immigrants and refugees, enforces the law, and deports the bad apples as quickly as possible.”
A decision of Ferry’s asylum plea from Judge Vandello, meanwhile, is expected by mid-October at the latest. In the meantime, Ferry has field a plea with a federal court against his continued detention.