February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Fr. Pribeck, 43, an assistant professor of English at Canisius College in Buffalo, has multiple college degrees including a doctorate from University College Dublin.
However, Pribeck is now facing the third degree over what U.S. officials allege was a botched attempt to smuggle the Irishman, identified in initial press reports as James Daly, into the U.S. on Sunday, May 1.
Daly, 48, and whose first name was later identified in a federal complaint as John, faces a charge of felony re-entry after deportation and is being held at an immigration facility in the Buffalo area.
Both men have been arraigned in federal court in Albany.
The Buffalo News reported a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection field office in Buffalo as stating that Pribeck had admitted knowledge of Daly’s previous deportation from the U.S.
Pribeck had further admitted an attempt to bring Daly back into the U.S., the spokesman, Kevin Corsaro, said.
Corsaro confirmed to the Echo that Daly was being held in custody pending further legal action.
Pribeck reportedly drove up to the border inspection post with Daly in the passenger seat of his car.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Daly initially claimed U.S. citizenship and displayed a Massachusetts driver’s license with another name.
Upon additional questioning and fingerprinting, however, Daly admitted that he was not a citizen and was not the person identified on the license.
The Echo reported in late 2004 that scrutiny on the U.S./Canadian border was being stepped up and that new measures would include fingerprinting and the checking of additional so-called “biometric” data.
Both Daly and Pribeck were arrested at the scene.
Pribeck is free on bond following a May 6 hearing in an Albany federal court. A second hearing is mandated within 30 days of that date.
“The date is as yet unspecified,” said Pribeck’s attorney, E. Stewart Jones Jr.
Jones said his client was innocent of the charge against him.
“He shouldn’t face any sentence because he didn’t do anything wrong,” Jones told the Echo.
However, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Woods, who is prosecuting both Daly and Pribeck, took a sharply different view.
“The statute calls for jail time,” Woods said.
In the case of Daly, a guilty verdict would mean a maximum of two years followed by deportation, Woods said.
Pribeck faces up to five years in jail.
Daly, according to reports, had lived in Boston on and off for 15 years until his deportation in June 2000.
An Irish diplomatic spokeswoman said that Daly was being provided with full consular facilities.
Ironically, the arrest of Pribeck came on the eve of a major statement on the plight of undocumented immigrants from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops.
And the priest’s legal plight came against the backdrop of the annual general meeting in Washington of the Irish Apostolate, the Irish Catholic church’s immigrant outreach program in the U.S.
That gathering was attended by, among others, Bishop Seamus Hegarty of the Irish Bishop’s Commission for Emigrants and a delegation from the Coalition of Irish Immigration Centers.
“The fact that so many entities have gathered here in support of the plight of the Irish undocumented lends huge credibility to the issue and will give the community a sense of hope as the current situation in a post 9/11 climate has become increasingly challenging,” said CIIC chairman, Bart Murphy, of the Apostolate gathering.