The 46-year-old Wallington, N.J., resident grew up in the strife-ridden Northern Ireland of the '70s. He came of age at the height of "the troubles"--the sectarian violence between the Catholic minority opposed to British rule and the Protestant majority loyal to the crown.

As Catholics, the McAllisters were second-class citizens. They were forced to live in rundown housing, had little chance of finding profitable work and endured the daily humiliations perpetrated by the British occpationary forces. As a teenager, McAllister watched helplessly as family members and neighbors were arrested without reason and carried off to government internment camps.

The Lower Ormeau Road section of Belfast where he grew up was known as the "Murder Mile" because of the frequent killings carried out there by loyalist (pro-British) paramilitary squads. McAllister was 16 the first time he watched a friend die in the street at the hands of loyalists.

It was "Scruff" Millen. Scruff had just left McAllister and a few other boys and was walking home along McClure Street, just off Ormeau Road. He had made it only a block when the familiar sounds of gunfire and screeching car tires echoed through the night air. McAllister was one of the first to reach Scruff, who lay dying on the sidewalk, blood pumping from his chest.

Then there was the incident two years later, outside the Rose and the Crown, the local pub for the Catholics who lived along Ormeau Road. McAllister, Jim Templeton and another boy were hanging out in front of the pub one night, smoking and laughing, when a carload of loyalists pulled up. The boys saw the gun and dove for cover. When it was over, Jim Templeton had three holes in him. He died on an operating table a few hours later.

There were other killings--many others. Not a year would pass without a friend or a neighbor dying from the troubles.

McAllister was 22 when he took up arms against those he deemed the "oppressors." He joined the Irish National Liberation Army and helped plot strikes against the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Belfast's predominantly Protestant police force, which often aided the loyalist paramilitaries in their attacks against Catholic civilians.

A paid informant betrayed McAllister, who was tried, convicted and sentenced in one of Belfast's nonjury "diplock" courts. He spent nearly four years in the notorious Long Kesh prison. After his release in 1985, McAllister tried to put the resistance behind him and picked up construction work to support his wife Bernadette and their growing family.

But the RUC wasn't ready to forgive McAllister's past. The harassment grew intense, the beatings regular. In one incident, members of the RUC forced Bernadette to watch as they savagely beat her husband with the butts of their rifles.

On the night of Oct. 2, 1988, two loyalist gunmen disguised in Halloween masks showed up at McAllister's home. An RUC contact had provided them with the address. Malachy and Bernadette weren't home that night, but three of their four children were inside with their grandmother. Their other child was in the street playing football and watched as the gunmen pointed their AK-47s at the front room of his home and fired off 26 rounds.

One of the would-be assassins spotted the children through a bedroom window and turned his weapon on them. Amazingly, the McAllister family escaped unhurt.

Shortly after the attack on their home, the McAllisters fled Belfast--moving first to Toronto, and then, in 1996, to New Jersey. The family applied for political asylum, arguing that their lives would be at stake if they were forced to return to Belfast.

The McAllisters went about creating a life in America. Malachy began a construction business, enrolled the kids in school and joined the local Catholic parish. The oldest boy, Gary, married a local girl. The youngest boy, Sean, is a receiver on his high school football team. His teammates call him "sticky fingers."

In October 2000 a federal immigration judge ordered Malachy McAllister deported due to his past conviction in Belfast but granted asylum to his wife and kids. The judge found that the McAllister family had suffered "extreme past persecution" and endured a "constant campaign of harassment."

McAllister filed an appeal against his deportation, and the government appealed the asylum granted to his family. Life went on uneasily as the McAllisters awaited a decision. A bad omen descended this past July when John McNicholl, another former member of the Irish National Liberation Army who had lived peacefully with his family in Upper Darby for almost 20 years, was seized and deported.

At 5:30 on the morning of July 17, McNicholl stepped out his front door and was about to head off to work when federal immigration agents swarmed. He was put in handcuffs and thrown into the back of a van. His son cried out in protest, but there was nothing to be done. Within hours the boy's father was hustled aboard a plane back to Ireland, in all likelihood never to see Upper Darby again.

Last month McAllister received the call he'd been dreading: A Board of Immigration Appeals had rejected his plea for citizenship, and worse, overturned the previous decision granting asylum to his wife and children. The agents--20 of them clad in jumpsuits--descended on the McAllister home on the morning of Nov. 21. Malachy wasn't home.

McAllister has since received a temporary reprieve. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals here in Philadelphia is deciding whether to consider his case. The family anxiously awaits a decision, knowing that federal agents may soon come to take them from their life in America.

"What does deporting me and my family back accomplish? Who does it appease?" asks a weary McAllister, sitting with his wife on a sofa in his comfortable New Jersey home. "The only thing that it accomplishes is the destruction and persecution of Irish-American familes at the behest of the British government."

"It's ironic that the day Prime Minister Tony Blair was visiting America was the day John McNicholl was picked up," adds Bernadette, "and on the day they tried to deport Malachy, President Bush was over in England."

"Why waste taxpayers' money sending 20 federal agents to my house?" asks McAllister. "I don't pose a threat to anyone. Is there a threat to national security in this country? Well, who poses that threat? It's certainly not Irish-Americans who fought in the struggles in the North of Ireland. They have never been a threat to this country and never will."

When denying McAllister's plea for asylum, the board ruled that since the 1998 peace accord, conditions have improved in Northern Ireland to such an extent that the McAllisters would not be in danger if they were forced to return to Belfast. McAllister shakes his head in disbelief. His enemies in Northern Ireland are waiting, he says, and that his case has garnered a lot of publicity back home only makes him more of a target.

"They're still killing Catholics," says McAllister, his voice trailing off. "The people who attacked my home are still in power."

McAllister has received some support for his efforts to keep his family in America. Ten U.S. congressmen sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft on his behalf. Irish-American organizations, already angered over McNicholl's deportation, are expressing outrage.

"The United States should support regions of the world where there has been a genuine effort made by both sides to move away from conflict," says Thomas Conaghan, president of the Federation of Irish American Societies of the Delaware Valley. "Northern Ireland is a success story in this regard. The British government released all political prisoners as a confidence-building measure in the peace agreement. President Bush now seems to be taking sides in the conflict rather than supporting the peace agreement. We will remember these actions against our communities when Bush tries to win Pennsylvania and the White House in 2004.