Raymundo Jarque was detained with his wife by immigration officers at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas after arriving from Manila on Tuesday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, quoting Philippine Consul General Marciano Paynor Jr.

Paynor, who is based in Los Angeles, reported that “Gen. Jarque and his wife were detained and denied entry to the U.S.” due to his inclusion in the U.S. terrorist watch list for his prior affiliation with the National Democratic Front, the Marxist umbrella group representing the rebels in peace talks to end the 36-year insurgency in the Philippines.

The communist rebels are on Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, which aims to cut off the flow of funds to the rebels and restrict their foreign travel.

The rebels suspended peace talks last year over the terrorist tag.

Paynor said Jarque and his wife were to visit their daughter, Melissa Cunanan, who lives in Irving, Texas.

The couple decided to sign papers “for their immediate return to the Philippines” instead of challenging the decision of U.S. immigration authorities. They were later transferred to another “facility” ahead of their departure to Manila, Paynor said.

“We thought we will be billeted in a hotel with a guard, or inside their office. Instead they brought us to the city jail,” Jarque told GMA television in a telephone interview.

The couple is expected in Manila on Sept. 23, said Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, a classmate of Jarque at the elite Philippine Military Academy, where they graduated in 1961.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Matthew Lussenhop denied Jarque was arrested, but said privacy rules prevented him from giving more details of the former general’s entry into the United States.

“Where he is? I don’t know,” Lussenhop said. But Lussenhop said Jarque was not in U.S. detention.

Jarque, 67, headed the military’s Negros Island Command in the central Philippines in 1991-1992 and was credited with turning the tide against the New People’s Army guerrillas who had broad support among the rural poor.

In 1995, he surprised the public when he announced he decided “to go underground to wage revolution.”

“I have come to understand and acknowledge the justness of the struggle waged in the countryside by my erstwhile foes...who have remained true to their revolutionary ideals of serving the people and liberating them from the continued exploitation and oppression of the corrupt and unjust system,” Jarque said then.

He was later appointed as a “politico-military consultant” of the National Democratic Front.

Jarque became less active in the talks after the government and the rebels signed an agreement on human rights in 1998.

In 2001, he became a consultant for a government oil company.

(AP)