Former INLA prisoner McAllister gets deportation reprieve

A former Irish National Liberation Army prisoner has received a reprieve from deportation from the United States following intensive lobbying by members of the US Congress on behalf of the long-term New Jersey resident.

Malachy McAllister (57) received notification through a call to his attorney Eamonn Dornan from the US Department of Homeland Security that he was no longer required to appear at a Newark office on Monday for deportation.

The Belfast man, who has been engaged in a decades-long fight for full residency since moving to the US 20 years ago, was ordered in March to "surrender for removal" after being granted annual deferrals since 2003.

US immigration officials have yet to inform him of the term of his reprieve.

“I am elated and hopefully there is something substantial that will come down rather than a temporary fix for the next several months,” he said.

Last week 44 Democratic and Republican members of Congress wrote to the US department in charge of immigration, arguing that deporting McAllister would be contrary to the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.

Congressman Joe Crowley, a New York Democrat, along with other US politicians raised Mr McAllister's case with US secretary of homeland security Jeh Johnson in calls over the past week as his deportation deadline approached.

“The reprieve is not permanent at this point, but I am confident it is one that allows Malachy to work on a permanent solution to his problem,” he said.

The former republican was jailed for seven years for two INLA attacks on Royal Ulster Constabulary officers during the 1981 hunger strikes.

He was released in 1985 and took no further part in the paramilitary activity. He fled Northern Ireland in 1988 after a loyalist gun attack on his home and now runs a construction business in New Jersey and an Irish pub in Manhattan.

The 2012 report by Sir Desmond de Silva into collusion in Northern Ireland found that a British security forces supplied a loyalist agent with a photograph of Mr McAllister used by the Red Hand Commandos in the attack on his home.