A convicted terrorist and boss of the Irish Republican Army in North America may finally be getting booted from the United States.
Gabriel Megahey, 82, lived in New York for decades but a June 20 letter from the US Department of Homeland Security warned his “parole” was being terminated, nearly 30 years after he and other IRA members were given dispensation to stay in the country.
“Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately,” reads the one-page letter, which Megahey shared with the Irish Echo.
The Belfast native was convicted in 1983 in Brooklyn Federal Court for conspiring to buy missiles to shoot down British helicopters amid the violent clashes in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.”
At the time, federal authorities considered Megahey “the officer commanding (OC) of America and Canada” for the IRA, he told PBS’s Frontline.
The married father of six served five years in federal prison for conspiracy and arms shipments.
Megahey, known by the nickname “Skinny Legs,” was convicted with three others, with then U.S. Attorney John Dearie describing him at the time as “the most culpable of these defendants,” and the group as a whole as “a network of men who sought to use this country as a base of terrorist activities,” according to reports.
“No one wants peace more than us,” Megahey, who first settled in Jackson Heights, Queens in 1975, insisted at the sentencing hearing.
He was released from prison in 1988 — but never deported.
Megahey and four other IRA members were then allowed to remain in the country as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the historic April 1998 accords which ended decades of violence in Ireland between those who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom and those who didn’t.
Now the grandfather of 14 and great-grandfather of five, who records show moved to Delaware in 2019, is reeling after DHS warned he would be fined and criminally prosecuted if he stays in the United States.
“DHS is terminating your parole,” according to the one-page letter, which Megahey shared with the Irish Echo. “Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
Megahey, who relies on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for expensive medicine necessary to treat a heart ailment, also faces the loss of his benefits.
“It would cost me $4,000 to $5,000 a month to pay for it on my own,” he told Straus News. “I can’t afford that. I’ll have to go home.”
DHS and Megahey declined comment.
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