Former IRA militant testifies in deportation case

RAYMONDVILLE - A former IRA militant acknowledged before a federal immigration court today that he was transporting explosives for the militant group in Northern Ireland when he was arrested in 1976.

Pol Brennan is fighting deportation after being arrested at a Border Patrol checkpoint in South Texas in January. In the second day of a hearing that is expected to carryover to Friday, Brennan described his early life in a violent Belfast.

``I have supported the IRA morally and sometimes actively,'' Brennan, 55, told U.S. Immigration Judge William Peterson.

Brennan had served eight years of a 16-year sentence for carrying a bomb in his car when he escaped a notorious Belfast prison in 1983. He said he was delivering the explosives to IRA members, but was not going to plant a bomb.

Brennan will try to convince Peterson that he should be granted political asylum or permanent immigration status allowing him to remain in the country.

Brennan detailed several early detentions and beatings he said he suffered at the hands of British soldiers.

Later, he described how he and 37 other prisoners escaped from The Maze prison outside Belfast by overpowering guards, donning their uniforms and commandeering a food truck. The plan disintegrated as the prisoners reached the front gate forcing them to abandon the truck and take off on foot.

Brennan later piled into a car with seven others and headed for the border. They holed up in a house with a Protestant family for several hours before starting a three-day hike on foot to the Irish border. Irish Republicans picked them up there and after more than a year in hiding, Brennan flew to the U.S. as Patrick Joseph Morgan. When the FBI arrested him in Berkeley, Calif. for applying for a passport with a fake name in 1993, he was calling himself Pol Morgan.

Brennan has said that deportation would expose him to retaliation in his homeland where Catholics and Protestants now share power, but deep-seeded tensions persist. It would also leave Volz, who is also expected to testify Thursday, in a difficult spot.

``The guys who have been brought back have suffered pretty severe beatings,'' Volz told The Associated Press this summer.

But if deported, Brennan would be sent to the Republic of Ireland, where sectarian violence is non-existent. The last IRA parolee to be killed was in December 1997, before the peace deal. Since then, several hundred IRA inmates have been freed from prison or returned home from abroad without incident.

British authorities have not been prosecuting IRA militants for crimes committed before 1998 because of the peace deal.

Asked what she would do if Brennan were deported, Volz did not have an immediate answer. She noted that her 87-year-old mother lives in South Texas and she has grandchildren on the West coast. She quit her job in California to stay in Texas where Brennan has been detained since his arrest in January.

``It's not the time when you anticipate being separated,'' she said. ``We've grown together like many married couples. He does this. I do that.''

Brennan and Volz were on their way from South Padre Island to Austin to visit friends in January when they stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint about an hour north of the border.

Brennan told the agents he was not a U.S. citizen. When they saw his work permit had expired - he had applied for but not received an annual renewal - they ran his name in the computer and saw his unusual history. He has been in federal immigration detention centers ever since.

It is not Brennan's first encounter with the U.S. government.

In 1993, after applying for a passport under an assumed name, the FBI arrested Brennan, kicking off a seven-year fight against extradition. The FBI also found that he had purchased a gun using his alias prior to his arrest. Britain dropped its extradition request in 2000, citing Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday accord, which called for the accelerated release of the conflict's political prisoners.

Ever since, Brennan and about 15 other former IRA prisoners, who made their home in the United States, have lived in a legal limbo. Even though Brennan entered the country illegally, he has been able to renew his work permits, but not been able to get permanent immigration status.

Since his 2000 release, Brennan was also convicted of misdemeanor assault for a scuffle with a contractor Brennan said owed him wages. An immigration appeals panel cited that incident and his use of an alias when originally entering the U.S. as justification for denying him bail this summer.