President Donald Trump deported a Nazi currently living in the United States from his home in Queens, New York, on Monday.
ABC News filmed agents deporting 95-year-old Jakiw Palij on a stretcher after Justice Department officials revealed that he served as an armed guard at a death camp in Poland before lying to immigrate to America. He is now headed to trial in Germany.
“For many years a Nazi forced labor camp guard had been living in NY – a terrible injustice. Past Administrations failed to deport him,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders wrote on Twitter. “Today, Donald Trump got the job done! ICE has removed this despicable Nazi from our great country.”
Despite a court ordering Palij’s deportation to Germany in 2004, past administrations had not acted to deport the former Nazi.
“Jakiw Palij lied about his Nazi past to immigrate to this country and then fraudulently become an American citizen,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “He had no right to citizenship or to even be in this country.”
According to the Justice Department, Palij immigrated to America in 1957, lying to immigration officials that he spent the war working on his father’s farm.
He admitted in 2001, that he was trained in the SS Training Camp in Trawniki, in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Although a judge ordered Palij deported in 2004, he remained in the United States until today.