Security Threat?: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Barred Entry to the US

[Danielle Ni Dhighe <danielle@xxxxxxxx>]

CounterPunch
22 February 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.



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