U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is unable to deport the last Nazi war criminal in the U.S.
“ICE has been, and remains, unable to remove this individual,” an ICE spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Jakiw Palij, who is reportedly the last Nazi war criminal in the U.S., will not be deported because “no other nation has agreed to accept him,” Eli Rosenbaum, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation, told the Daily Beast.
Palij entered the country in 1949 and was later granted citizenship, according to the news outlet. The former Nazi was stripped of his citizenship in 2004 and ordered deported after it was discovered that he had lied while filing for citizenship.
An anonymous U.S. government source told the Daily Beast, “ICE cannot remove him unless he has travel documents and Germany would have to provide those to the U.S. government to remove him and that has not happened. This has been over a decade now since he was ordered removed, but we haven’t gotten Germany to comply.”
Palij worked at the Twaniki labor camp and took part in Operation Reinhard, a plan to kill all Jews in Poland, the Daily Beast reports.
“Unfortunately, the governments of Germany, Ukraine and Poland have declined to admit Palij and no other nation has agreed to accept him,” Rosenbaum told the Daily Beast.
Palij currently lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.
