Judge Decries Rigid Immigration Laws in Northern Ireland Man's Asylum Case

By MARYCLAIRE DALE
Associated Press Writer
 Apr 13, 7:50 PM EDT
PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court judge sharply criticized U.S. immigration laws, writing in a court opinion that rules designed to combat terrorism instead force the "knee-jerk" removal of "decent men and women."

Judge Maryanne Trump Barry complained that judges have no discretion in applying harsh and complex laws and asked the attorney general to intervene in the case of a man from Northern Ireland denied asylum this week by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I refuse to believe that 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...' is now an empty entreaty. But if it is, shame on us," Barry wrote in a concurring opinion.

The case involved Malachy McAllister, a former member of the paramilitary Irish National Liberation Army convicted in the 1981 wounding of a British policeman.

McAllister served three years in a Northern Irish prison for his role as the lookout. In 1988, British loyalists stuck assault rifles through the windows of his Belfast home and fired 26 rounds when only McAllister's mother-in-law and young children were there.

McAllister and his family came to the U.S. through Canada on a tourist visa in 1996 and have spent more than a decade living quietly in a northern New Jersey suburb, where he works as a stone mason.

After McAllister applied for asylum, the Bureau of Immigration Affairs ordered him deported on the grounds of prior "terrorist activity." McAllister's lawyers appealed, arguing that the definition of such activity was unconstitutionally broad and vague.

The 3rd Circuit panel disagreed.

"The definition includes a great deal of conduct, but all of this conduct could reasonably constitute terroristic activities," Judge Jane R. Roth wrote.

Barry agreed with the conclusion, but suggested judges should be given more discretion.

"We cannot be the country we should be if, because of the tragic events of Sept. 11, we knee-jerk remove decent men and women merely because they may have erred at one point in their lives," wrote Barry, who said McAllister's actions came as part of a struggle to end more than 800 years of British rule. "We should look a little closer; we should care a little more."

McAllister's supporters doubt an appeal to the Supreme Court would succeed, and are instead seeking relief through Congressional and Bush administration channels.

U.S. Rep. Steve Rothman, D.-N.J., who is pushing a bill to let the family stay, has secured a pledge from the Department of Homeland Security not to detain McAllister for at least the next several weeks to give Congress time to act, an aide said Thursday.

"I don't think we're going to have any opposition in Congress," said Bob Decheine, Rothman's chief of staff.

Meanwhile, they have asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who once served on the 3rd Circuit, to step in. By law, the department cannot comment on whether people are seeking asylum, a spokeswoman said.

McAllister's lawyer, Eamonn Dornan, said judges should have the leeway to distinguish between his client's case and that of someone from a country at odds with the United States.

"He is no threat to the safety and security of the United States. No Irish man ever has been," Dornan said.

Two of McAllister's children were also ordered deported on grounds their appeal was filed two weeks too late.

An immigration judge had at one point granted them and their mother asylum, but the children's application - which was attached to their mother's - was rendered moot when she died suddenly of cancer in May 2004.

Those children, Nicola, 19, and Sean, 18, are now college students.

Malachy McAllister believes the family could face persecution if they return to Northern Ireland.

"We could be sent back to a country that we were lucky to escape from with our lives," McAllister, who lives in Wallington, N.J., told The Associated Press earlier this year. "It plays on my mind every second of the day."

Roth, in her opinion, points to a State Department report that finds that former members of the Irish Republican Army have been able to live freely and hold office in Great Britain.
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© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

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Irish ex-convict quickly running out of time in asylum quest

May 30, 2006 4:41 PM

By MATTHEW VERRINDER
The Associated Press
 

NEWARK, N.J. - A New Jersey stone mason branded a terrorist by the United States government for a 25-year-old assault on a police officer in Northern Ireland is hoping two congressmen can help halt his impending deportation.

Malachy McAllister, 48, was imprisoned in the United Kingdom for being a masked lookout in a 1981 ambush that wounded a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer outside a Belfast pub. In April, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited the conviction in denying the asylum plea of McAllister and his two teen children.

On Thursday, a court-ordered delay of McAllister's deportation expires; Homeland Security Department officials say they will not immediately throw him out of the country.

"I'm at the mercy of Homeland Security," McAllister said recently while attending a gathering of Irish-American officials in New York City. "We would just like to disappear into anonymity, but we can't. If they come for us, they come for us. We can't do anything about that."

McAllister, a former member of the Irish National Liberation Army, which opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, served more than three years in prison for the ambush.

In 1988, after his release, masked British loyalists armed with assault rifles stormed his Belfast home and fired 26 rounds, narrowly missing his mother-in-law and children. Within weeks he took his family and fled, first to Canada before settling in Wallington, a working-class suburb 15 miles west of New York City, in 1996.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said the agency won't schedule McAllister's deportation until July 10, a three-month window after the federal appeals court's ruling so he can exhaust any appeals to the Supreme Court.

McAllister's supporters doubt an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court will work, and are instead seeking help through Congress and the Bush administration.

 

Rep. Steve Rothman, D-N.J., is pushing a bill to allow the family to stay. Meanwhile, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has sent Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff a letter lobbying for the family to stay and said they would face harm if sent back.

"He was targeted in Northern Ireland," King said. "There is a threat to his life and his family's if they go back."

McAllister, who admits to his crimes with the INLA but contends they were committed during a civil war, not as an act of terrorism, said he was considering hiring a video company to film him in daily life - cooking dinner or driving daughter Nicola to college classes - so he can send it to Homeland Security to show he's not a threat.

McAllister was ordered deported in late 2003, and two days later Homeland Security agents came for him, but he had already left for work. The agents staked out his house for days, but McAllister stayed away and was able to remain in the country after the federal appeals court agreed to hear his case.

McAllister's lawyers argued to the court that the definition of a terrorist was unconstitutionally broad and vague.

"The definition includes a great deal of conduct, but all of this conduct could reasonably constitute terroristic activities," Judge Jane R. Roth wrote in the ruling.

Given a choice of fleeing or being deported, McAllister said he has no intention other than "obeying the law and accepting the circumstances."

But he questions the logic of being returned to a homeland where danger lurks.

"What does sending me back prove? My family and I are no threat to the security of the United States," McAllister said. "Every day my options are getting slimmer and slimmer."

 
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