A onetime member of the Irish Republican Army paroled after serving time for bombing a police station in Northern Ireland decades ago was deported by Boston ICE officials this week.
Darcey McMenamin, who was 18 when he was charged in the 1993 mortar attack on a police station west of Belfast, lost in his appeal to both remain in the Boston area and be set free during the coronairus pandemic.
He was deported back to Ireland this week, the New England office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Thursday.
“There is no safe haven in the U.S. for foreign nationals convicted of terrorist activities. ERO Boston officers still continue their duties even during these trying times,” said Todd M. Lyons, field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Boston.
“Those who believe they can hide in the U.S. from their crimes including terrorist activities they committed in other countries are in for a rude awakening,” Lyons said. “ICE remains committed to removing dangerous foreign nationals from the U.S., even those who may have managed to evade immigration law for a lengthy period of time.”
McMenamin was arrested by Randolph police last fall on an outstanding warrant for leasing a motor vehicle by fraud and driving with a suspended license. Records show he is now 44.
McMenamin was fingerprinted by Randolph police and that’s when ICE became aware he was in Massachusetts.
He was deported Monday, according to ICE, after an immigration judge in Boston denied his request to remain in the U.S. June 3.
The feds said McMenamin entered and departed the U.S. via the visa waiver program multiple times between 2000 and 2007, but “never disclosed his criminal history on his arrival and departure record as required.”
In 2007, U.S. Customs and Border Protection provided McMenamin port-authorized parole into the U.S. for a few days for the birth of his child, but he never departed in violation of U.S. immigration law, ICE added.
McMenamin and another man were arrested weeks after the 1993 mortar attack, according to multiple published reports. They were accused of launching the attack against a police station in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, just minutes after the Irish Republican Army’s three-day Christmas cease-fire ended at midnight, United Press International reported at the time.
A spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary said two people were injured by the blast, which damaged the police station in Fintona, a small town 40 miles west of Belfast, according to UPI.
The two innocent bystanders injured, a man and a woman in their 20s, “suffered shock and minor cuts,” the UPI said. They were passing by the unoccupied police station when the attack happened.
At the time, the IRA was fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland. It was all part of “The Troubles” that gripped Northern Ireland for decades. A power-sharing agreement in 1998 ended the bloody civil war.
McMenamin was later paroled as part of a “compassionate release” initiated by England in 2009 as part of a controversial discharge of the mastermind of the Pan Am Flight 103 “Lockerbie” bombing, according to published reports.
That bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was sick and expected to live for only three more months. He died in 2012 having served eight years of a life sentence. The Pan Am bombing killed 270 people, most of them American.
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