US Deports Former Nazi Labor Camp Guard Jakiw Palij to Germany – White House

"Early this morning, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) implemented a 2004 order of deportation to the Federal Republic of Germany of Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi SS labor camp guard in German-occupied Poland and a postwar resident of Queens, New York," the statement read, cited by the i24NEWS broadcaster.

This 1957 photo provided by the US Department of Justice shows Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has been living in the Queens borough of New York.

The White House stressed that US President Donald Trump commended his administration and the ICE on "removing this war criminal from United States soil."

"The United States will not tolerate those who facilitated Nazi crimes and other human rights violations, and they will not find a safe haven on American soil," the statement read.

According to media reports, Palij was removed from his home in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens on Monday and landed in Berlin on Tuesday morning.

It remains unclear, however, whether Palij would face prosecution in Germany over his wartime crimes.

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Palij, who was born in 1923 in Poland’s Pyadyky (modern Ukraine), immigrated to the United States in 1949 and received the US citizenship in 1957 after hiding his Nazi past. In 2001, Palij admitted to the US Justice Department officials that he had been trained at a Nazi camp.

In 2003, a federal judged revoked his citizenship after it became clear that Palij served as an armed guard at the Trawniki concentration camp in Poland, including on November 3, 1943, when nearly 6,000 Jewish prisoners were killed. In 2004, Palij was ordered to be deported. In 2005, the court dismissed his appeal.