U.S. deports former Nazi guard to Germany

WASHINGTON — The lastknown former Nazi camp guard living in the United States was deported to Germany, an action that the White House trumpeted Tuesday in an apparent effort to show its harsh immigration enforcement policies are not just aimed at migrants on the border.

The Justice Department said that Jakiw Palij, 95, was an armed guard at a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II, and that he helped oversee the murder of thousands of prisoners during the Holocaust, including 6,000 Jews on a single day in 1943.

Palij emigrated to New York in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1957 after lying about his role in Nazi atrocities, according to the Justice Department. In 2001, however, he admitted lying about his past and was stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported in 2004. Removal efforts stalled because he was effectively stateless and Germany, Poland and Ukraine refused to take him in.

On Monday, TV cameras were on hand in Queens, N.Y., as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wheeled Palij, who was bearded and wearing a cap, out of his brick home on a gurney. He said nothing to reporters and later was put on a plane to Dusseldorf.

Palij, who was born in what is now Ukraine, is the 68th former Nazi to be stripped of U.S. citizenship and deported since the late 1970s, according to the Justice Department. Several of those identified could not be deported because no country would accept them, and several died while awaiting deportation.

Eli Rosenbaum, a Justice Department official who oversees the U.S. hunt for former Nazis, said the Palij case “sends yet another message of deterrence” to war criminals.

“The passage of time — even many decades — will never weaken our government’s resolve,” he said. He described Palij as “the last person in the U.S. who was under a court order of removal on the basis of his participation in Nazi acts.”

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted his approval for the deportation: “Nazi prison guards have no place in the USA. We must stand firmly against hate, antiSemitism and bigotry in all its forms. Good riddance to this war criminal.”