AFTER six months of waiting in an immigration jail in Texas, Maze prison escapee Pol Brennan recently saw his August 12 court date rescheduled when Hurricane Dolly forced the complete evacuation of the Port Isabel Detention Center he was being held at in Los Fresnos, Texas a day before the storm hit. Brennan, who was first detained at an immigration checkpoint in Texas on January 27 for having a lapsed U.S. work permit, had filed his renewal form on time but the U.S. authorities hadn't updated it by the time he was stopped.Currently Brennan is being held in a detention center in Pearsall, Texas where he's awaiting an appeal on the denial of bond. Brennan was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from the Maze in Northern Ireland in September 1983. He lived in the San Francisco Bay area under an alias until the FBI arrested him in January 1993.Although the British government decided to drop all efforts to extradite Brennan back to Northern Ireland in 2000 in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, Homeland Security prosecutors apparently overlooked this, and gave little consideration to the fact that federal officials had authorized Brennan to live freely in the San Francisco Bay area for years, where he worked as a carpenter, awaiting the outcome of his political asylum application.Last week three U.S. representatives, Peter King, Richard Neal and Jim Walsh, sent a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calling for Brennan to be granted bail."In the light of his good behavior and on release and his record of full compliance with the conditions of bail previously imposed by the federal courts, it concerns us that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) insists on detaining Mr. Brennan now, eight years after the conclusion of the extradition matter," the letter read. "Mr. Brennan's continued detention without bond appears to serve no end that is consistent with the interests of the U.S. to foster a lasting peace in Northern Ireland."Brennan's court appearance was originally set for August 12. But due to the damage by Hurricane Dolly, those proceedings have now been pushed back to September 24. James Byrne, Brennan's San Francisco based attorney told the Irish Voice, "When Hurricane Dolly flooded the lower level of the Port Isabel detention facility the court was closed. We got a rescheduling notice until September 24 at 9 o'clock. But at this point we are not certain even if that date will go ahead due to scheduling."Byrne admits that congressional representation by both political parties is a boon to Brennan's case. But at this point no one can predict how the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security will respond."If three congressmen look at the case and indicate that they don't think he's a threat to the U.S. and that he should be allowed to fight his case while he's out on bond, I think it frames the issue in a different light than the one framed by the immigration and customs enforcement departments," Byrne added.