Border News

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced this week that it has deported John Edward Anthony McNicholl, a suspected member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a terrorist organization in Northern Ireland. McNicholl was delivered to Irish authorities last Friday. According to ICE, McNicholl is wanted on murder charges for his alleged role in a 1975 ambush of police officers in Northern Ireland; officials said he escaped from prison while awaiting trial in 1976, and later entered the United States illegally after his visa application was denied.

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that two high-ranking Russian space officials involved in the International Space Station project were denied U.S. entry visas to attend a conference in Monterey, California. Russia Space Agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov said the two men had completed all the necessary paperwork on time but were refused the visas on the eve of their departure. The U.S. embassy did not explain the decision and could not be reached for comment.


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According to a Thai official quoted by Reuters, the US has accepted 8,000 refugees from an ethnic Hmong group that fled Laos to Thailand after a communist takeover in 1975. The refugees will be resettled with relatives in the United States. The US embassy in Bangkok declined to comment.

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The Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found that Rabih Sami Haddad, a co-founder and former president of the Global Relief Foundation, is removable from the country, clearing the way for his deportation by ICE officials. The Global Relief Foundation has been categorized by the Treasury Department as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization. Haddad is a Lebanese citizen who resided in the Detroit area before being apprehended on December 14, 2001, for being in the United States illegally. The Immigration Judge found that Haddad was not eligible for asylum because he was "a danger to the security of the United States."

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The AP reported this week that five Ecuadorians have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to encourage and induce aliens to illegally enter the United States. The Justice Department said the defendants were trying to smuggle 270 illegal immigrants into the United States and that they will probably be sentenced to about three years in federal prison and deported upon release.

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A U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, sentenced two men to 27 months in federal prison for smuggling 44 undocumented immigrants in moving van across the Tohono O'odham Nation. According to the Arizona Daily Star, the two men admitted they charged $50 for each immigrant to be delivered to Phoenix.

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Austin police are holding three men on charges of transporting and harboring undocumented aliens, after officials found 29 illegal migrants living together in a North Austin house. The immigrants said they had been smuggled into the country. ICE identified Erik Angeles-Mendoza, Daniel Angeles-Mendoza, and Felipe Ceron-Espinoza, as belonging to a smuggling ring holding the aliens "until friends or relatives pay off the price of bringing them across the border."