The big question in the deportation of a Nazi prison guard is…Why did it take so long?

JAKIW PALIJ is a 95-year-old who worked as a guard at the Nazi German Trawniki SS camp in occupied Poland.

The Nazi criminal had been living in the US since 1949! He lied about his history and said he was a farmer during the war…NOT TRUE! (See more on Palij below)

He was finally stripped of his US citizenship in 2004 by a federal judge at the request of the Department of Justice. He was ordered to be deported but Poland and Germany refused to take the Nazi criminal. Our Us Ambassador to Germany tweeted (see below) out that President Trump was determined to get the Nazi out of the US and did…Thank you Mr. President!

The 95-year old was seen being wheeled out of his Queens apartment by ICE agents to be sent back to Germany.

US AMBASSADOR TO GERMANY RICHARD GRENELL TWEETED:

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1031849832665755648

ICE RELEASED A STATEMENT WITH MORE INFORMATION ON PALIJ:

“Nazi war criminals and human rights violators have no safe haven on our shores,” said Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “We will relentlessly pursue them, wherever they may be found, and bring them to justice. The arrest and removal of Jakiw Palij to Germany is a testament to the dedication and commitment of the men and women of ICE, who faithfully enforce our immigration laws to protect the American people.”

Palij, 95, was born in a part of Poland that is situated in present-day Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1957. He concealed his Nazi service by telling U.S. immigration officials that he had spent the war years working until 1944 on his father’s farm in his hometown, which was previously a part of Poland and is now in Ukraine, and then in a German factory.

As Palij admitted to Justice Department officials in 2001, he was trained at the SS Training Camp in Trawniki, in Nazi-occupied Poland, in the spring of 1943. Documents subsequently filed in court by the Justice Department showed that men who trained at Trawniki participated in implementing the Third Reich’s plan to murder Jews in Poland, code-named “Operation Reinhard.” On Nov. 3, 1943, some 6,000 Jewish men, women and children incarcerated at Trawniki were shot to death in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust. By helping to prevent the escape of these prisoners during his service at Trawniki, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring that they later met their tragic fate at the hands of the Nazis.

On May 9, 2002, the Criminal Division’s then-Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York filed a four-count complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, to revoke Palij’s citizenship. The complaint was based primarily upon his wartime activities as an armed guard of Jewish prisoners at Trawniki, who were confined there under inhumane conditions.  Palij’s U.S. citizenship was revoked in August 2003 by a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York based on his wartime activities and postwar immigration fraud. In November 2003, the government placed Palij in immigration removal proceedings.

In decisions issued on June 10 and Aug. 23, 2004, U.S. Immigration Judge Robert Owens ordered Palij’s deportation to Ukraine, Poland or Germany, or any other country that would admit him, on the basis of his participation in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution while serving during World War II as an armed guard at the Trawniki forced-labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland under the direction of the government of Germany and his subsequent concealment of that service when he immigrated to the United States. As Judge Owens wrote in his decision ordering Palij’s deportation, the Jews massacred at Trawniki “had spent at least half a year in camps guarded by Trawniki-trained men, including Jakiw Palij.” In December 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals denied Palij’s appeal.

The removal of Palij to Germany was effectuated through close cooperation between the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State.

THE WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT:

White House releases a press statement on ICE deporting a former Nazi SS labor camp guard back to Germany.

THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ICE FOR FINALLY DEPORTING THIS NAZI CRIMINAL!

 

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