November 3, 2003 Rally Set For Today To Support Deportee
By Larry Fish

A Delco man was labeled a member of a terror group and sent to Ireland. His deportation violates a 1998 pact, some say. John McNicholl stepped out of his Upper Darby house at 5:30 a.m. on July 17 to drive to his union job as a sprinkler fitter, as he had been doing for years.

But on this day, he was seized by four federal agents, taken into detention, and within hours was put on a plane to Ireland.

He's unlikely to ever see Upper Darby again.

Labeled a member of an Irish terrorist organization by the Department of Justice, McNicholl had been in this country - illegally, but trying to obtain citizenship - raising a family for almost 20 years.

His deportation has aroused Irish and Irish American anger. Many say it goes against the spirit of the Good Friday agreement of 1998, meant to bury old animosities and bring peace to Northern Ireland.

McNicholl's supporters will hold a rally for him today at 1 p.m. at the new National Irish Memorial at Penn's Landing.

His eldest son, Sean, a senior at Upper Darby High School, will speak. But the rest of the family - another son, a daughter, and McNicholl's wife of 20 years, Frances, will be with him in Donegal, Ireland.

"It's not just my husband they deported," his wife, known as Frankie, said this week by phone from Philadelphia International Airport as she prepared to board a plane.

To keep the family intact, Frankie McNicholl and the two younger children, all American citizens, will stay with him in Donegal. Sean will finish his senior year at Upper Darby.

John McNicholl, now 51 and a native of the British province of Northern Ireland, was arrested there and accused of a role in the 1976 murder of a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The authorities said that McNicholl was a member of an outlawed group, the Irish National Liberation Army, and he was sent to Maze prison.

He didn't stay long; he and other prisoners tunneled out and he fled to the Republic of Ireland. Ireland declined to extradite him to Britain, and today he is in little danger of being sent for trial.

John and Frankie McNicholl came illegally to the United States in 1984, and for most of that time they have lived in Upper Darby. He has always denied any role in the murder or membership in the Liberation Army.

Frankie McNicholl, like many illegal entrants, eventually got a waiver for her status and became a naturalized citizen. Her husband was attempting to go the same route, and he reported every 90 days to the immigration authorities to renew his work permit.

The deportation action against him started in 1995, with the usual series of appeals and reviews. The basic charge against him was his alleged membership in the Irish National Liberation Army.

McNicholl's appeal of his deportation was denied on July 10, seven days before he was seized, Lance Payne, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said this week, and the deportation order became official.

The Good Friday agreement freed most "political prisoners," including those who were members of the Liberation Army, said Dennis P. Heron, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Philadelphia. And another man had long since been convicted of the policeman's murder.

But the deportation case against McNicholl went forward, for reasons his supporters say they cannot understand. They suggest that the current administration wants to curry favor with the British and is eager to be seen deporting anyone who can be called a terrorist.

"He has never done anything against this country," his wife said, contending that he never got so much as a parking ticket.

"For the Irish American community here in the Delaware Valley and indeed across the country, it's hurtful and even spiteful" to have an immigrant who followed the rules to be seized without warning from a sidewalk and hustled onto a plane, said Thomas Conaghan, president of the Federation of Irish-American Societies.

Conaghan said the entire family was suddenly left without its breadwinner, and Irish American groups and his union have pitched in to help.

As do the others, he calls it ludicrous to think of McNicholl as a terrorist. And he said that the notion of rooting out long-absent members of groups in Northern Ireland should be fading as the Good Friday peace process continues.

"It's time to step beyond the blame game," he said.

McNicholl's lawyer, James J. Orlow, called McNicholl's deportation "a political lynching" and said his case continues in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Orlow said that the Irish National Liberation Army is not on the State Department's list of terror groups and that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft arbitrarily and illegally has attempted to add it.

Shortly after McNicholl was spirited away, Orlow said, "John Ashcroft claimed credit for deporting a terrorist."

Today's rally will be "more like a presence there, a remembrance," Conaghan said.

Heron summed up why McNicholl's supporters do not expect to see him in Upper Darby anytime soon.

"Once he's been deported," Heron said, "we've never gotten a guy back."

And Frankie McNicholl, asked how optimistic she is, said: "Not very. I've lost faith in the government here."