In six hours this past January, all the good that Pól
Brennan had ever done came unraveled.
The 56-year-old Belfast-born carpenter and his American wife
Joanna Volz were in their brand-new Sportsmobile camper van,
heading from Volz's parents' home on South Padre Island to
Austin to visit friends. From Austin, they would start the
long drive back to their home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Brennan decided to drive the Harlingen-Austin leg of the
trip. He would never make it to Austin.
Volz napped as they whizzed up Highway 77 under the warm
winter sun through the lonely brush of the King Ranch. When
Brennan eased up to the Border Patrol/Department of Homeland
Security checkpoint in the tiny hamlet of Sarita, he woke
Volz. He knew they would be stopped and questioned, as the
van still had temporary plates. As it turned out, the van's
registration was the least of his worries.
The two cars ahead of the Sportsmobile were waved
through. The guard shoved an upraised palm at the
Sportsmobile.
"You a U.S. citizen?" the patrolman asked Brennan.
"No," Brennan replied. "I am Irish."
The patrolman asked Brennan for his papers. Brennan
complied, handing over a valid California driver's license
and his yearly federal work permit. "I didn't know anything
was amiss," he would say much later.
In fact, the Border Patrol would find very much to be
amiss. For starters, Brennan's work permit had expired. The
patrolman told Brennan to park the van and come in the
office for further questions.
Although he still held some hope, Brennan could already
feel his life slipping away. He had one card up his sleeve:
He dialed up his San Francisco lawyer, James Byrne, on his
cell phone, and asked him to fax his papers to him — his
pending applications for a new work permit, a green card and
political asylum. All were sent, and none was enough. "I had
thought that maybe the faxed paperwork would save me," he
would say later. "When they hold you for six hours, you know
it's not good."
Because at the same time the fax was humming with papers
coming over from Byrne's office, the Border Patrol's
computers were churning out other information, and it was
exciting stuff. The slight, scholarly-looking Irishman
with the glasses, close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair and
the Mephistophelean beard was no mere tourist or snowbird.
Reams of information on Brennan's past came humming over
the transom — an old Interpol warrant detailed how one
afternoon in Belfast in 1976, Brennan and a companion had
been caught with a gun and a 23-pound bomb they were alleged
to have been intending to plant in a shop, and how he had
been sentenced to 16 years in Long Kesh Prison, or Maze, at
it was also known. And how, seven years later, he and 37 of
his fellow Irish Republican Army cohorts had busted out of
the Kesh in the largest jailbreak in the entire history of
the United Kingdom.
For patrolmen accustomed to catching run-of-the-mill
Mexican, Caribbean and Central American immigrants and the
occasional drug-runner, this was a red-letter day. The shark
fishermen had netted something more exotic, even if it was
probably no threat — a giant squid, perhaps.
In a posting to his Web site, Brennan would later write
that the Border Patrol agents' "little eyes were jiggling
with excitement" as they downloaded Brennan's picaresque
adventures, "acting as if they had caught the terrorist
Al-Zarqawi."
Brennan tried to explain that those matters had been
settled in federal courts in San Francisco, where he had
been living openly since 2000. He argued that he had filed
for the extension to his work permit on time, and that it
was the government's fault that he hadn't received it. He
told them truthfully that he was no longer being actively
sought by British authorities.
All to no avail. They were more interested in that bomb
he was caught with in Belfast in 1976 or that day 25 years
ago when he broke out of jail. Volz eventually headed to
Austin alone. Brennan went to jail, where he is now fighting
to avoid deportation to a country he hasn't seen in 25
years.
_____________________
Brennan's current plight is unusual but not unique. There
are at least 15 former IRA prisoners living in America
today. Many or most of these people are married to Americans
and/or have American-born children, and many have faced
deportation.
As it stands now, former IRA prisoners in America cannot
travel back to Ireland to visit friends and family, and must
renew their work permits often at great expense and danger
to their employment. (Often, the applications are delayed;
in the interim, employers are at risk if they allow the
immigrants to work.) Additionally, a handful of former IRA
members — an estimated five or so — are still hiding and now
have no incentive to come in from the cold.
Earlier this year, two former IRA prisoners — Paul Harkin
and Matt Morrison — announced the foundation of Thar
Saile. (Pronounced "Har Sail-ya," the Gaelic name means
"Overseas.") Thar Saile's stated aim is "to end the
uncertainty for these men and their families by providing
them with a permanent legal status and the right to live,
work and travel unencumbered."
Reached at his home in St. Louis, where he has been
living and working as a registered nurse for more than ten
years, Morrison characterized the Bush Administration as
negligent at best and, at worst, as apparently acting on the
belief that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still at
their peak.
"The word I employ the most is 'anachronism.' The reality
is that there has been a peace dividend all around for
almost everybody that was involved in the peace process,"
says Morrison. "And it would seem on the face of it that
former Irish Republicans here in the United States are much
further behind the starting line than everybody else."
In the new Northern Ireland, former hardline IRA leader
Martin McGuiness until quite recently shared power with
virulently anti-Catholic leader the Reverend Ian Paisley.
(Paisley retired from his post earlier this year.) Indeed,
the two were photographed together in President George W.
Bush's office, looking almost downright chummy. (Such a
development once seemed as unthinkable in Northern Ireland
as Michael Moore marrying Anne Coulter would be here.)
But that photo op was the exception to the rule with
President Bush. Morrison, Brennan and other former IRA
prisoners in America believe the President's neglect of the
Irish question is a form of political payback: Unlike
President Bill Clinton, who took a keen interest in Northern
Irish matters, Bush did not owe any favors to blue states
with significant Irish-American enclaves.
Morrison also believes that post-9/11 realities are at
play. "In a post-9/11 environment, the government wants to
be seen to be pursuing a hard line," he says. Which, he
believes, is counterproductive to the still-ongoing peace
process in Northern Ireland. "What you're seeing is the
unfinished business of the peace process," he says. "There's
a number of loose ends, and while they are not gonna stop
the peace process dead in its tracks, they can fray the edge
of the fabric.
"There is an irony here," Morrison continues. "And I'll
tell you what it is: The irony is that guys like Pól
Brennan, myself and the other guys that are involved in Thar
Saile have been the very people who have been vociferously
supporting the peace process throughout and have been
keeping American supporters on board throughout the peace
process."
_____________________
The federal Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos,
where Brennan is incarcerated today, is a long way from
Ireland in every way imaginable. Saint Patrick famously
drove the serpents out of Ireland, but he never made it to
this or any other part of Texas. A sign posted near the
perimeter of the lockup warns of the presence of both
venomous snakes and alligators, and green jays, Mexican
eagles and ocelots patrol the brush.
Paradoxically, given these exotic surroundings, Brennan
may be closer now to Belfast than he's been at any time
since he slipped past the huge British dragnet in 1983.
Though he has bailed out of American jails before, this time
around the judge has denied bond. Unless there is a sea
change in the drift of his case, Brennan could face
deportation before the summer is out.
If you were to look for Pól Brennan's literary precedent,
you could do worse than Jean Valjean, the redeemed
criminal-turned-philanthropist hero of Victor Hugo's Les
Misérables.
Of course, you could also do better, as Brennan has
hardly been a saint since he came to America. Nevertheless,
at bottom, Brennan's conversion from active member of the
Irish Republican Army to American working stiff has been
dramatic.
And this year, the United States government has proven
itself every bit the doctrinaire pursuer that Valjean's
nemesis Inspector Javert was in Hugo's masterwork.
Brennan has detailed his most recent incarceration on his
Web site,
www.polbrennan.com. As the palest detainee in Port
Isabel, he was subject at first to great suspicion from his
Caribbean and South and Central American fellow detainees.
He reports that people got in his face and demanded to know
where he was from. Once he told them Ireland, they tended to
become friendly.
More so than they are to each other: He writes that there
is frequent tension between the Hispanics and the
English-speaking Caribbeans, which often boils over when
debating whether to tune in Spanish- or English-language TV.
Before his dispatch to solitary confinement, Brennan
shared a cell with a fellow English speaker, a Jamaican
named Dave Clark. The name reminded Brennan of the British
Invasion pop group, and Brennan told him so. "Yeah, I've
heard that before," the Jamaican answered. Brennan wrote
that his conversations with Clark reminded him of similar
scenes of Jamaican/Irish interaction in British jails from
the Daniel Day-Lewis film In the Name of the Father.
But most of the time, life in the lockup is boring,
Brennan writes. Other than Bibles, there is no reading
material, so Brennan's supporters have set up a Web page to
help supply him with the popular science books he loves —
books like Longitude and Krakatoa: The Day the
World Exploded. Brennan writes, reads, talks on the
phone and tries mainly to keep to himself while maintaining
good relations with all the different ethnic groups. On the
off chance he gets control of the TV, he tunes in The
Colbert Report, The Daily Show or BBC news.
But the S.H.U. (Special Housing Unit, or solitary
confinement) made dorm life seem like a night on the Vegas
Strip. "Life in the S.H.U. is a mixture of pettiness and
frustrations," Brennan writes. "The days are long and
boring, interrupted by moments of drama usually in the form
of other inmates acting out their own frustrations and the
guards' responses to these incidents."
Brennan was told his transfer to the S.H.U. — which most
often stems from bad behavior — was to protect him from
gangs. Brennan believes that it actually stemmed from prison
officials' paranoia that he would once again take part in a
breakout. In May, after four months in solitary, he was
released back into the general population. (Brennan's
supporters believe this came when his case started drawing
publicity on the outside.)
Joanna Volz, his wife, has moved to the Rio Grande Valley
to be near him and her family. Brennan writes that her life
has been thrown into chaos. "Any time a spouse is left to
cope on their own, the stress on them is tremendous — apart
from the loss of a loved one there are the added financial
and emotional burdens which such forced separations bring."
_____________________
Los Fresnos is indeed a long way from Ballymurphy, the
staunchly Catholic and Nationalist district of Belfast where
Brennan was born in 1953. In the harsh logic of that time
and place, Brennan's decision to cast his lot with the IRA
was perhaps the only choice he could make. Ballymurphy also
produced IRA leader Gerry Adams and was the scene of a 1970
riot that lasted a full six months.
"The police and the soldiers were kickin' in our doors
every night," he recalls. "The Republican struggle was a new
breath of life."
In 1976, when he was 23, he was picked up on the bomb
charge, for which he was sentenced to 16 years in Belfast's
maximum-security Maze prison. To protest their status as
common criminals rather than prisoners of war, Bobby Sands,
a one-time cellmate of Brennan's, embarked on a hunger
strike. This would eventually take his life and those of
nine fellow hunger strikers, but not before Sands was
elected to the British Parliament and had become an
international cause célèbre.
At the same time, plans were afoot for what the
Republican side would come to know as "the Great Escape." In
1983, Brennan and 37 others busted out. Brennan eventually
made it to a safe house, where he was given a choice: return
to active IRA duty or opt for a new identity in America.
Brennan chose the latter.
After slipping into America as "Pól Morgan," Brennan took
jobs in construction and met single mother Joanna Volz in an
Oakland bar in 1984. They were married five years later.
They settled into a typical American domestic routine:
Brennan worked in construction, Volz as a legal clerk in the
San Francisco public defender's office, and together they
raised Volz's daughter Molly and two whippets. (Volz
declined to be interviewed for this article, but she
recently told New York City's WBAI radio that she had no
knowledge of Brennan's past when they met.)
While still on the run, in a letter in the Irish
People, a journal published by NorAid, an American
fund-raising arm of the IRA, Brennan did his beat for peace:
He publicly and strongly disavowed some of the IRA's more
violent tactics. At about the same time, Brennan made an
ill-advised decision. He purchased a pistol from a licensed
dealer in California. Earlier this year, he told the
Irish Echo newspaper that the gun was for nothing more
than target practice and that, at his wife's behest, he soon
sold it (again, through proper channels) to help finance his
new hobby: astronomy.
Between 1992 and 1994, Brennan and three other Maze
escapees in America were unmasked by the FBI and jailed.
British authorities instituted extradition proceedings,
which Brennan and his former comrades-in-arms fought for
years. By 2003 they had won at least a partial victory — the
British government had withdrawn its extradition request and
declared that while Brennan was still on the books as a
fugitive, he was no longer being "actively pursued."
But while the heat from Britain was diminishing, it would
only increase in America. As time passed, new political
realities — namely, anti-immigrant fervor and 9/11 — saw to
that.
And in part Brennan himself is to blame. While he was
detained on the extradition rap, the gun came to light. That
he no longer possessed it did not matter: By purchasing a
gun while still living under an alias, he had committed a
felony, and he was convicted of using false identification
with intent to deceive the gun dealer in 1995.
In 1996, get-tough federal legislation was passed
dictating mandatory deportation for undocumented aliens
convicted of many crimes. While it was not retroactively
applied in Brennan's gun case — for which he was sentenced
to six months time served — the conviction remains in his
record. Although it is not mandated that he be deported on
the gun rap, judges can use the conviction at their
discretion.
Still, in light of the peace process in Northern Ireland,
in 2000 President Clinton placed Brennan and a handful of
other former IRA prisoners in "deferred action" status that
allowed them to get work permits and stay in America
indefinitely. While this was viewed at the time as a victory
for former IRA prisoners, the celebration has proven
short-lived.
Angelique Montaño is an attorney with Houston immigration
and family law firm Tindall & Foster and, although she is
not involved in Brennan's case, is very experienced with
cases involving deportation.
"Deferred action is not a green card," she explains.
"It's not intended to be a long-term benefit that you can
eventually get citizenship through. Basically, it's a
political tool."
And two years ago, Brennan got in trouble again: He was
convicted of misdemeanor assault in California after a fight
with a contractor over $1,000 in wages. He was levied a
$1,500 fine and sentenced to 500 hours of community service.
But if the Feds were so keen on deporting Brennan, why
didn't they do so then? Why would they wait until he
stumbled into the Sarita checkpoint?
Montaño says that arrests like Brennan's are not unusual
today. "All the databases are coming together and everyone's
criminal information is coming up everywhere," she says.
It's not uncommon, she says, for officials to wait for
immigrants to come to them in airports or checkpoints or
border crossings, rather than seek them out for arrest.
"Whether you have a work permit or green card or whatever,
they don't care that you've been running around free," she
says. "It's not until those specific incidents that things
get triggered."
In June, in the Harlingen court of immigration Judge
Howard E. Achtsam, prosecutors from Homeland Security
reactivated the deportation case against Brennan based on
his fraudulent entrance to America back in 1983, and opposed
bail.
Byrne, Brennan's attorney, fired back that he had met
bail twice in California and that he had a family and a job
waiting for him in California.
Achtsam denied bail, ruling that Brennan was a flight
risk based on his escape and a danger to society based on
the assault.
Morrison, the Thar Saile activist, says the denial of
bail is "really reprehensible." "They're saying he's a
flight risk," he fumes. "For heaven's sake, he was an
extraditee. Where's he gonna flee to? And what is he gonna
run from? His wife? His community? His source of income?"
Brennan's next court date comes in August. Byrne has
filed a request for an adjustment of status — he has moved
for Brennan to receive a green card based on his marriage of
19 years. He has also requested a change of venue to federal
immigration court in northern California. Montaño sees the
wisdom in that maneuver. "If it comes to a court challenge
where he has to go through all his removal things to the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, it is the most pro-immigrant
court circuit in the United States, if you can say that
about any of them," she says. "The Fifth Circuit, which is
Texas, is one of the most conservative."
_____________________
Brennan is heartened by what is happening on his behalf
on the outside. About 600 people have signed an online
petition in his support. America's largest Irish-American
group, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, has come to his
defense. In contrast to his California incarceration in the
1990s, when only Irish ethnics and the likes of Noam Chomsky
and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn came to his
aid, this time around Brennan also has support from the
political right: In June, Long Island Congressman Peter
King, the ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security
Committee, told the Belfast Telegraph that Brennan
should get bail.
Nevertheless, the wheels are still grinding toward
deportation. Brennan says that he was recently asked by a
prison official, acting on orders from Judge Achtsam,
whether he would prefer being sent to Ireland or Northern
Ireland. Brennan declined to answer.
Save for a few weeks hiding out back in his IRA days, he
has never lived in the Irish Republic and would have to
start from scratch there. In Belfast, he possibly could have
to pay some debts to a society he still believes is
illegitimate, but he does have a large family there,
including an aging father he hasn't seen in years. "If I go
there, I might have to do some time," he says. "But I would
get to see my family."
His American wife would have to start over and Brennan
would have to scrap his life in California. His employer
there has spoken highly of him. So have his supervisors at
Oakland's Chabot Planetarium, where Brennan volunteers in
order to indulge his love of the stars.
_____________________
Once a terrorist, always a terrorist, and no matter if
America was never your target. Illegal immigrants who are
convicted of crimes must be deported, no matter how minor
the crime. That's the way Homeland Security sees cases like
this. Like Javert in Les Misérables, its goal is "not
to be humane, not to be great, not to be sublime; it [is] to
be irreproachable."
Still, all decent governments, Morrison maintains, allow
themselves "wiggle room." "The [American] government wants
to say, 'Well, these are the rules. Period. The end.' But
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that even a
cursory review of governmental activity in and around
immigration issues previously will prove that they can do
anything they want when they want to do it."
Morrison cites the example of a famous world leader who
was convicted of terrorist activities. "If you want to
strictly apply the law, Nelson Mandela does not meet the
requirement for gaining access to the United States of
America," Morrison points out. "Do they stop Nelson Mandela
from coming to the United States?"
Morrison wonders if there is even that much thought
applied to Brennan's case. "I wonder sometimes if with all
these agencies that have been subsumed under the general
heading of Homeland Security, has a monolithic organization
been created here? Where the individual organizations were
dysfunctional enough to begin with, when you glue all that
dysfunctionality together, it's hard to actually distinguish
between what's actually a policy and what's just a function
of bureaucratic ineptitude. And the real problem is, we
don't know. It's like a black hole in space."
"I'm not being flippant when I say this, but all of us
that belong to Thar Saile have got histories that don't look
very good on paper," Morrison continues. As a teenager,
Morrison was jailed for a decade for attempted murder of a
policeman. The incident came at the height of the Troubles
and, in Morrison's telling, was the result of a running gun
battle.
"But the reality is that every single one of us have
integrated into our communities in the United States. We've
got American wives for the most part, we've got American
children and we've been taxpaying, contributing members of
our communities since the day and hour we've come over here,
and I think there's been multiple proofs of that along the
way. It's not like you're dealing with some invader from
outer space.
"I'm a nurse by profession, for God's sake!" Morrison
continues. "I've taken care of sick American children and
sick American adults, and I've helped Americans to die when
I worked for hospice. It's almost as if there's nothing we
can do that's thrown into the balance. It doesn't matter
what we do."
Brennan has been convicted of both offenses large and
small and remains a fugitive to boot. The irreproachable
thing to do would be to deport him. Javert certainly would.
As for the humane thing, the sublime, the great, perhaps
those are just the sort of gestures America used to make.
john.lomax@houstonpress.com
