June 6, 2003 San Francisco Internee
Editorial, Irelandclick.com

Former republican prisoner Ciaran Ferry is being treated abominably by the United States immigration authorities.

The Lenadoon man wasn’t arrested because he was a threat to US security – far from it, he was arrested during an interview about his green card application. He is married to a US citizen.

He was arrested on January 30 and hasn’t seen his young family since St Patrick’s Day – he will see them for the first time in two months in Friday, through a thick pane of glass. He is held on 23-hour lock-up in a high security unit (in Denver County Jail) and is subjected to strip-searches on a regular basis – a procedure that he has, not surprisingly, railed against. The entire state of affairs is unacceptable.

Ciaran Ferry was one of a huge number of Irish men and women who did what they thought necessary during the long years of conflict that raged in the north of Ireland. Countless others on all sides did the same. As the conflict staggers uncertainly towards its conclusion, all that Ciaran Ferry wants to do is live a quiet, ordinary life with his loved ones, and yet the US immigration service have decided to do all in their power to make that an impossibility.

It is an unfortunate consequence of the horrific events of 9/11 that US authorities have too often lashed out blindly in their understandable desire to protect their country from further assault. But Irish republicans are no enemies of the American people – Irish republicans have a close and cherished relationship with the United States, and our countries’ stories have been intertwined over centuries of shared history.

It may be that the dead hand of British interference is at play in the tough treatment being handed out to Irish republicans in the US – Ciaran Ferry is far from the only one to have suffered from brutal and heavy-handed treatment in recent months and years.

Whatever the background, it’s time that Ciaran Ferry was allowed to get on with his life.