The Trump administration deported the last known living Nazi in the U.S. after more than a decade of efforts of trying to remove him, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Tuesday.
“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,” Sanders said.
ICE explained in a statement that the former Nazi guard 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.”
After Palij was discovered by U.S. authorities in the early 2000’s he was ordered deported by Ukraine, Poland, or Germany though all three countries refused to accept him for years, requiring him to be held in New York City.