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US immigration court orders deportation of former Nazi supporter

By Ann Riley

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced Wednesday that the Detroit Immigration Court [official website] has ordered the removal [press release] of a Michigan man accused of killing Jews while serving as a member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in L'viv, Ukraine, during World War II. John Kalymon, found to have personally shot Jews while serving in the UAP between 1942 and 1944 and participated in various violent anti-Jewish operations, will be deported to Germany, Ukraine, Poland or any other country that will admit him. UAP documents revealed that Kalymon took part in round-ups and forced transports of Jews repeatedly over two years. US Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker rejected [AP report] Kalymon's defense request for a mental-competency hearing because his dementia prevented him from testifying, ruling that he had adequate and competent legal counsel to represent him. Kalymon plans to appeal the order to the Board of Immigration Appeals or the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy for the Criminal Division's Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section (HRSP) [official website] Eli Rosenbaum said, "Ivan Kalymon was part and parcel of the Nazi machinery of persecution that ended the lives of more than 100,000 men, women and children in L'viv." Kalymon, now 89, immigrated to the US from Germany in 1949 and gained US citizenship in 1955. Hacker found that, when applying for his immigration visa, Kalymon concealed his UAP service. In 2004, the DOJ filed suit to revoke Kalymon's US citizenship. In 2009, the DOJ announced the initiation of removal proceedings [JURIST report] against Kalymon.

The DOJ's HRSP handles cases, including Kalymon's, aimed at denaturalizing or deporting former Nazis and other human rights violators who participated in wartime persecutions. Last May, the Philadelphia Immigration Court [official website] ordered the deportation [JURIST report] of former SS guard Anton Geiser to Austria for serving as an armed guard at the Sachsenhausen and the Buchenwald concentration camps during World War II. The court found that Geiser is removable under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act [text] because a visa may not be granted to anyone who was involved in persecutions based on race, religion, or national origin. In 2008, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit revoked [JURIST report] Geiser's US citizenship because he had obtained it illegally. In May 2009, the DOJ succeeding in deporting [JURIST report] accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk [NNDB profile; JURIST news archive] to Germany to face trial. Earlier that year, German prosecutors charged Demjanjuk with 27,900 accessory counts stemming from his alleged involvement as a guard at the Sobibor [Death Camps backgrounder] concentration camp where more than 260,000 people were executed in gas chambers.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on February 03, 2011 (boomark / email).