February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Bernadette McAllister, wife of former INLA man Malachy McAllister, is this week battling ovarian cancer.
The 45-year-old mother of four underwent surgery at Hackensack Medical Center in New Jersey last week.
“This is a bigger battle than any deportation proceeding,” Malachy McAllister said following what was successful surgery.
Bernadette will now be undergoing chemotherapy, he said.
McAllister said he believed that the stress that his wife had gone through over the last few years may have been a contributing factor in her becoming ill.
“We’ve all been so stressed out with one thing after another,” he said. “I just want people to pray for Bernadette. I would give anything to have her healthy and back with me.”
McAllister said he was hopeful that Bernadette would be released from the hospital sometime this week. He said that he and his wife had recently taken out health insurance, though he was not yet certain as to how extensive the coverage in the plan would be.
The latest cruel twist to the family’s story follows a legal reprieve at the beginning of the year.
In January, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia granted motions for stays of removal filed on behalf of Malachy, Bernadette, and three of the couple’s four children.
And in the last couple of weeks the family’s battle to stay in the U.S. received a political boost when both Malachy and Bernadette met, and were photographed with, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Brehon Law Society dinner in Manhattan.
The McAllisters are being backed in their bid to remain in the U.S. by a number of members of congress from both main political parties.
The family fled to Canada from Belfast in 1988 after loyalists fired 26 shots into the family’s home on the Lower Ormeau Road. In March 1996, they entered the U.S. and embarked on their marathon effort to secure political asylum.
One court ruling ordered the deportation of Malachy McAllister and simultaneously granted political asylum to Bernadette and the children.
A subsequent ruling rejected Malachy’s McAllister’s appeal against deportation and overturned the asylum decision.
These decisions resulted in the case ending up before the Third Circuit appeals court. A decision from that court could still be months away.