[Ppnews] From the H-Blocks to a Texas Jail

[Political Prisoner News]

May 23, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/boyer05232008.html

 From the H-Blocks to a Texas Jail


The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

By SANDY BOYER and SHAUN HARKIN

TWENTY-SIX years ago, Pol Brennan was an Irish Republican Army (IRA) 
prisoner in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, watching his friends die on 
hunger strike. Today, he is in solitary confinement in a Texas 
immigration holding center.

His story reveals a great deal about the evolving Anglo-American 
attitude toward the IRA wrought by the Northern Ireland Peace 
Process. It is also where the war on "terrorism" meets the war on 
immigrants in the United States.

Pol Brennan was born in 1953 in one of the poorest neighborhoods of 
Belfast, Northern Ireland. While growing up, being detained and 
beaten by British soldiers or the pro-British police force was almost 
routine. By 1972, when he was 19, like many of his generation, he 
joined the IRA to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

In 1976, Brennan was convicted of possessing explosives and 
immediately joined the blanket protest in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh 
prison. Here, IRA men refused to wear the prison uniform, demanding 
to be recognized, rightly, as political prisoners. They lived for 
years in cold prison cells, covered in nothing but a blanket.

Brennan shared a cell with Bobby Sands, the first man to die on the 
1981 hunger strike for political status. As 10 men died, he lost 
several other friends. Along with British miners, Irish hunger 
strikers were on the vicious cutting edge of the Thatcher regime's 
attack on working people everywhere.

In 1983, two years after the hunger strike ended, Brennan was one of 
38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the H-Blocks. It was the largest 
prison break in British history from Her Majesty's Prison Maze, 
considered one of the most secure prisons in Europe.

Pol made his way to the Bay Area, where he met and married Joanna 
Volz, a U.S. citizen. They lived quietly until January 1993, when 
federal agents arrested Brennan on a British extradition warrant. He 
was forced to spend more than seven years fighting extradition, and 
was imprisoned for three of those years, half the time in a building 
with no windows. A campaign to block his extradition received wide 
support, with Noam Chomsky, Christy Moore and Alexander Cockburn 
among the many who spoke out on his behalf.

The British government finally withdrew its extradition request in 
October 2000. By that time, Northern Ireland had changed 
dramatically. The IRA had ended its war. Sinn Fein, the main 
Republican political party, had agreed to govern Northern Ireland in 
coalition with Unionist political parties whose bottom line has 
always been preserving British rule in Ireland. In this new 
environment, Britain released IRA prisoners and withdrew its 
extradition requests.

The U.S. government also dramatically changed its attitude toward the 
IRA. In response to the 1994 IRA ceasefire, it suspended deportation 
proceedings against some former Republican prisoners. However, even 
after the extradition request was withdrawn, Pol Brennan still faced 
deportation proceedings. But they were put on hold while his 
application for political asylum was pending.

Pol, Joanna and her daughter Molly were able to live a peaceful and 
relatively normal life in the Bay Area. He worked legally as a 
carpenter, she as a legal clerk with the public defender's office. 
Brennan was able to indulge his passion for astronomy by volunteering 
at the local planetarium. The couple adopted two whippets. They named 
one Marley, after Pol's late friend Larry Marley, the architect of 
the escape from Long Kesh.

* * *

THEIR NORMAL life was suddenly interrupted on January 26. Brennan and 
Volz were driving from Oakland to Texas to visit her relatives when 
they were stopped at an immigration checkpoint, 100 miles inside the 
U.S. border. Brennan produced his work authorization, but the two 
were detained because it had expired. Brennan was able to reach his 
lawyer, who faxed the Border Patrol agents documentation that he had 
an asylum case pending and had applied to renew the work permit.

But the agents ran Brennan's name through their computers and came up 
with the 1983 escape from Long Kesh. Brennan says, "They acted as if 
they had caught the terrorist al-Zarqawi, as they as they huddled 
around their computer screens. Their little eyes were jiggling in 
their heads with excitement."

The Border Patrol agents ignored the evidence faxed to them by 
Brennan's lawyer. As Brennan describes it, "They said, 'Well, just 
because you have an application pending doesn't mean you have a legal 
right to be in the United States. So we are going to detain you.'"

Pol Brennan was taken to the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los 
Fresnos in southern Texas. He was initially placed in the general 
population with men from Central and South America, Trinidad and 
Jamaica, and even Palestine.

Brennan was soon moved to solitary confinement, because, apparently, 
he was considered an escape risk since he broke out of Long Kesh 25 
years earlier. It was as if they expected the IRA to invade South 
Texas to free him.

Today, Pol is locked in a cell 23 hours a day. He spends the other 
hour in the TV room. He sustains himself with books and phone calls 
to the outside world. When it is his turn to use the phone, the 
guards bring it on a trolley and hand it to him through the cell 
door. Brennan then has to hold the phone at an angle and punch in the 
10-digit code for the prison phone system. He can only make collect 
calls or use a phone card.

Joanna Volz has moved to Texas, where she can be near Pol. She visits 
for half an hour once a week. They talk through a telephone, 
separated by a plastic wall. Sometimes, he has been handcuffed 
throughout the visit.

An immigration judge denied Brennan bail, saying he is a "flight 
risk" and "a danger to the community." The judge, who is notoriously 
anti-immigrant, ignored numerous letters of support from the Bay 
Area, including one from Brennan's employer saying his job was being 
held open for him. Brennan was deemed a "flight risk" despite the 
fact that he had twice reported back to prison in California after 
his bail was revoked.

Now Brennan will have to go through a pro-forma hearing before the 
same judge on his political asylum application. From there, he will 
go to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, if necessary, to the 
Court of Appeals. He will almost certainly remain in prison at least 
through September.

* * *

POL BRENNAN is collateral damage in the war on "terrorism." His 
32-year-old IRA conviction and the escape from Long Kesh are keeping 
him from receiving a green card or U.S. citizenship. In the present 
political climate, unlike when the IRA declared its ceasefire, there 
is no great urgency to helping former Republican prisoners.

Brennan is also a victim, like many millions of others, of the U.S. 
government's anti-immigrant dragnet. Pol was stopped at the 
immigration checkpoint because the Department of Homeland Security 
hadn't renewed his work authorization. His bail application was 
refused by an immigration judge so biased that he routinely rules 
against all immigrants, even Cubans.

Now, Brennan's asylum application will almost certainly be decided by 
the Board of Immigration Appeals. Pol describes what's happening to 
immigrants in this situation:

Regretfully, current policy has been shaped by post-9/11 paranoia, 
and to some extent xenophobia that we can see in such actions as the 
USA PATRIOT Act and the hundreds of miles of border fencing and walls 
now under construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The vast majority of detainees here are from Central and South 
America (Mexico included). who suffer the ill effects of U.S. trade, 
industrial and agricultural policies that undercut key sectors of 
their home economies and directly necessitate their seeking greener 
pastures to survive. Meanwhile, my case inches along.

Joanna Volz sums up Pol's situation: "This is just old news. The war 
is over. It's time this was over. The incident Pol was involved in 
happened 30-odd years ago. But this all keeps repeating itself. It's 
like a roundabout. Everybody else is trying to move on, but he's held 
back. It's just not fair."

The Irish government can certainly demand Brennan's release and call 
for an end to deportations proceedings. Born in Belfast, under the 
Irish Constitution, he is as much an Irish citizen as if he was born 
in Dublin. The then-Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Albert Reynolds 
convinced Bill Clinton to let Gerry Adams visit the U.S. over the 
heated objections of the British government. On April 30, the 
outgoing Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was given the unusual honor of 
addressing a joint session of Congress.

Ireland's economic importance to the U.S. should guarantee a hearing. 
U.S. companies have invested $84 billion in Ireland, more than double 
the total for China and India combined. In 2005, U.S. exports to 
Ireland were valued at $9 billion, while Irish exports to the U.S. 
totaled $28 billion. Unfortunately, the Irish government has shown no 
interest in fighting for Pol Brennan, and it will require political 
pressure at home to change their minds.

Popular mobilization and political pressure aimed at both the U.S. 
and Irish government is the best way to fight for Pol's release. The 
California Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest Irish 
organization in the U.S., has passed a resolution urging the 
"Department of Homeland Security to withdraw its opposition to bail 
and allow Pol Brennan to live and work legally in the U.S, until his 
political asylum case is adjudicated." His neighbors in Oakland are 
pressing his Congresswoman, Barbara Lee, to intervene.

* * *

What you can do

For more information on Pol Brennan's case and to find out how you 
can show your support, go to the <http://www.polbrennan.com/>Pol 
Brennan Support Web site. Supporters are circulating an 
<http://gopetition.com/petitions/pol-brennan-stop-deportation/signatures.html>online 
petition demanding that Pol not be deported from the U.S.

Sandy Boyer is the co-host of Radio Free Eireann on WBAI in New York 
City and a veteran organizer for Irish political prisoners.

Shaun Harkin is an immigrant rights activist in Chicago and 
contributor to <http://www.SocialistWorker.org>SocialistWorker.org.




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