U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried for 12 years to deport a former Nazi guard who had been living in Queens, N.Y., to Germany, but was unable to because the European country would not take him back, according to a former Department of Homeland Security official.
Thomas Homan, former acting director of ICE, said Wednesday the government rescinded 95-year-old Jakiw Palij’s citizenship years ago but Germany refused to repatriate the former Nazi concentration camp guard. On Tuesday, ICE announced his removal.
“We have been trying to remove him for at least a dozen years,” Homan told Fox News. “I have said a hundred times, ‘This president cares.’ He knows this issue. He’s taken it personally. And he’s pushing it. So thank God he’s in the position he’s in to try to make an effect on border security and public safety because he’s making a difference.”
Homan recalled in 2009, when he first arrived at ICE headquarters in Washington learning of Palij’s situation.
Palij was born in a former Polish territory that is now a part of Ukraine. He immigrated to America in 1949 and became a citizen in 1957 after lying about his connection to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party and having worked at the Trawniki Labor Camp in Poland, where 6,000 Jews were killed in November 1943.
A court ordered Palij’s deportation in 2004, but Germany and other countries refused to take him.
When Richard Grenell came on earlier this year as U.S. ambassador to Germany, Trump instructed him to make the Palij deportation happen, Grenell said Tuesday.
“I’ve got to give the president, Trump, a lot of credit here. He talked about in this his campaign. He talked about once he got in office about this. There were 22 or 23 of them that weren’t accept their nationals back, even after being ordered removed by a federal judge here,” Homan said about countries who were not repatriating deported people from America.
“This president took the bull by the horns on this issue. I’ve got to give him a lot of credit. He’s held DHS on this,” he added.
Currently, nine countries — down from 22 — will not take back repatriated citizens. The State Department has imposed visa sanctions against six of those nine remaining countries.
