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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Security Threat?
Bernadette Devlin
McAliskey Barred Entry to the United States
By LAURA FLANDERS
Irish activist and former Member of Parliament,
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was detained by immigration officials
in Chicago, February 21, and denied entry into the United States
allegedly on "national security" grounds.
According to her daughter, Deidre, two
INS officers threatened to arrest, jail, and even shoot the legendary
civil rights campaigner when she arrived at Chicago's O'Hare
airport. McAliskey (56) was then photographed, finger-printed
and returned to Ireland against her will on the grounds that
the State Department had declared that she "poses a serious
threat to the security of the United States."
"Mommy was this close to being locked
up," said Deidre, Saturday in New York. The two were traveling
together from Ireland to the US to attend a christening,
According to daughter Deirdre (27) the
McAliskeys cleared US immigration in Ireland prior to boarding,
and received routine permission to travel, but upon their arrival
they were stopped at baggage claim. Detained by two INS officers,
they were told that the order to bar Bernadette McAliskey came
from US officials in Dublin.
During the dispute that followed, Deirdre
says one INS officer used "very thinly veiled threats"
against her mother, including, "if you interrupt me one
more time I'm going to slam the cuffs on you and haul your ass
to jail."
One officer, says Deirdre, "pulled
his chair right up to mommy and I heard him say 'Don't make my
boss angry. I saw him fire a shot at a guy last week and he has
the authority to shoot.'"
Denied access to a lawyer, Bernadette
was sent back to Ireland. "She's not in the best of health
and the 13 hours of travel put her at further risk," Deirdre
says.
A tireless advocate for the Irish nationalist
cause, at the age of 21, McAliskey was the youngest person ever
to be elected to the British parliament. A witness to the deaths
of 13 civilians shot dead by British paratroopers during a civil
rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972, McAliskey narrowly
avoided death a second time when she and her husband were shot
in their home by a loyalist death-squad in 1981. Deirdre, who
was present, was five years old at the time.
Famously articulate, McAliskey has been
frequent visitor to the US for the past thirty years, although
this was her first visit in over eighteen months. She has been
awarded the symbolic "keys" to several US cities, including
New York and San Francisco. On her first trip, in 1971, the young
McAliskey made civil rights history when she refused to be met
by Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daly on account of his treatment
of opponents of the Vietnam War.
On Monday, Deirdre intends to consult
with a lawyer in New York. She has several questions, among them:
Is there or is there not a State Department Review in her mothers's
file? If there was nothing there on Friday morning, when she
was cleared for travel by US authorities in Dublin, why did INS
authorities in Chicago exclude her later that same afternoon?
Does the US government consider Bernadette
Devlin McAliskey a security risk? "I can't imagine what
threat they could think she poses to US security," says
Deirdre, "Unless the threat is knowing too much and saying
it too well."
When the McAliskeys were detained in
O'Hare airport, Deirdre says that the INS were also questioning
four young men "with Arabic sounding names." She believes
that the four were later taken to jail. The McAliskeys, who have
a long history fighting government repression on both sides of
the Atlantic, are concerned about the denial of all visitors'
rights. Perhaps, says Deirdre, they are a position to raise a
ruckus that other people can't.
"However INS is required to deal
with things, and whatever their protocol may be, it is not part
of their legal procedures that you should be threatened with
jail and threatened with being shot," says Deirdre. At this
point, she is urging visitors to the US to think twice, "if
the state this jumpy, I'd not advise anyone to come here unless
absolutely necessary," she says.
Bernadette McAliskey is now in the process
of filing a formal complaint with the US consulate in Dublin.
Yesterday's
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February 15
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