(Screenshot)

(CNSNews.com) – The White House announced Tuesday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) implemented a 2004 order of deportation for a former Nazi labor camp guard who had been residing in Queens, N.Y.



Jakiw Palij was deported to Germany. Born in Poland, Palij immigrated to the U.S. in 1949 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957. He hid his Nazi service during the U.S. immigration and naturalization process. Instead, he told immigration officials he spent World War II working on a farm and in a factory.



President Donald Trump commended ICE’s decision to remove “this war criminal from United States soil,” the White House said in a statement. “Despite a court ordering his deportation in 2004, past administrations were unsuccessful in removing Palij. To protect the promise of freedom for Holocaust survivors and their families, President Trump prioritized the removal of Palij. Through extensive negotiations, President Trump and his team secured Palij’s deportation to Germany and advanced the United States’ collaborative efforts with a key European ally.”



In 2001, Palij admitted to the Department of Justice that he received training in 1943 at the Nazi SS Training Camp in Trawniki, in German-occupied Poland. According to court documents, men who trained in Trawniki took part in “Operation Reinhard,” code name for the Third Reich’s plan to murder Jews in Poland. He also served as an armed guard at the nearby Trawniki Labor Camp.



Approximately 6,000 Jews – children, women, and men – who were held prisoner at the adjacent Trawniki Labor Camp were shot and killed on Nov. 3, 1943 in what is considered one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust. As a guard, Palij prevented their escape and “played an indispensable role in ensuring that the Trawniki Jewish victims met their horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis.”



A federal judge in the U.S. revoked Palij’s U.S. citizenship in August 2003 “based on his wartime activities, human rights abuses, and postwar immigration fraud.” He was ordered to be deported in 2004. He appealed the judge’s decision and was denied in 2005.



The U.S. government has “prioritized the identification, prosecution and deportation of Nazi war criminals since the 1970s,” the White House said. Anyone with information on foreign nationals or foreign nationals who are naturalized U.S. citizens and are suspected of taking part in human rights abuses or war crimes are asked to call the ICE Security Investigations tip line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE. Or they can fill out the online tip form.



ICE’s Human Rights Violators & War Crimes Unit has four missions: To prevent the admission of foreign war crimes suspects, persecutors and human rights abusers into the United States; To identify and prosecute individuals who have been involved and/or responsible for the commission of human rights abuses across the globe; To remove, whenever possible, those offenders who are located in the United States; and to oversee the development of programs in response to the former President's Presidential Study Directive-10, the prevention of mass atrocities.



ICE has arrested more than 275 people for human rights-related violations under various criminal and/or immigration statutes since fiscal year 2004. During that same period, ICE has also denied more than 139 people from getting entry visas to the U.S. and “created more than 66,000 subject records, which prevented identified human-rights violators from attempting to enter the United States.” It also obtained deportation orders for more than 590 known or suspected human rights violators from the U.S.



Meanwhile, a State Department official began his opening testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on U.S.-Russia relations on Tuesday by mentioning Palij’s deportation.



“If you’ll indulge me, I want to start with a piece of welcome news that’s unrelated to this morning’s testimony. Yesterday, August 20th, the U.S. government removed to Germany Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi camp guard at the notorious Trawniki slave labor camp for Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. While this process took far longer than we wanted, the removal of this individual can bring some comfort to Holocaust survivors and others who suffered at the hands of those like Palij, who did the bidding of the inhumane Nazi regime,” A. Wess Mitchell, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, said.