Three Derry men, including a former member of the IRA, pleaded guilty yesterday to making false declarations on US immigration forms and are to be deported.
The three where arrested at a Boston airport last Thursday after arriving off a London flight.
They were sentenced to time already served in prison and were handed over to the Department of Homeland Security for immediate deportation.
Two of the three, Donald Oliver Browne (44) and David Carwyn Curtis (31), have been charged with hiding information about convictions for serious crimes, while the third, Damien Martin McCafferty (35), is charged with helping Browne and Curtis to fill out the documents with false information.
While the offence is likely to have been treated much less seriously before the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the investigation included two agencies within the Homeland Security Department, as well as the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The Anti-Terrorism Unit of the US Attorney's Office prosecuted the case.
Ms Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for the US Attorney's Office in Boston, said that the men had made an agreed declaration of facts with prosecutors before pleading guilty.
According to an affidavit filed by the US Attorney's Office in Boston, Browne was listed on a US government database as being "armed and dangerous", because of his past membership of the IRA, while Curtis has been convicted of attempted murder and is on probation.
The three were arrested at Boston's Logan airport on Thursday after flying in from London.
All three waived a preliminary hearing last Friday. They could have faced a maximum sentence of 30 years' imprisonment, to be followed by five years of supervised release and a $500,000 fine.