« Previous Story | Next Story »

February 24, 2003

World-Renowned Irish Civil Rights Leader Bernadette Devlin Mcaliskey Is Turned Away at the U.S. Border and Deported

World-renowned Irish civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey was refused entry to the US over the weekend, and deported.

She passed through the US immigration office in Dublin just fine. But when she arrived in Chicago, a loudspeaker called out her name. McAliskey says she was surrounded by four immigration officers. One of them told her they had received a fax from their agents in Dublin. The fax called her a “potential or real threat to the United States.”

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is a world-renowned civil rights activist. She was elected to the British Parliament from Northern Ireland in 1969, when she was just 21 years old. She was the youngest British MP in history.

In August of that year she was arrested during the “Battle of the Bogside,” an uprising in Derry that marked the beginning of 30 years of armed resistance to the British occupation of Northern Ireland. She served four months in prison for inciting a riot. She was still an MP.

Over the years she continued her activism. In 1981, she and her husband were shot by members of a Protestant paramilitary group at their farmhouse near Belfast. Bernadette was struck by nine bullets.

We go now to Bernadette Devlin McAliskey in Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Guest:

  • Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader.

Creative Commons License The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

« Previous Story | Next Story »