Federal Judiciary

Notorious Nazi Loses Deportation Appeal

By Robert Loblaw

Demjanjuk v. Mukasey, 07-3022 (6^th Cir., Jan. 30, 2008)

The man who many have alleged to be Ivan the Terrible may have beaten a death sentence, but he?s not going to beat deportation. That?s the word from the Sixth Circuit, which rejected an immigration appeal from John Demjanjuk, who allegedly ran the gas chamber at the Treblinka concentration camp during World War II.

Demjanjuk had been living quietly in the U.S. since 1952, until a federal investigation revealed his history as a war criminal. During the 1980s, Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and extradited to Israel to stand trial for his crimes. There, he was convicted and sentenced to death. But the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction and set him free. Demjanjuk returned to the U.S., where our courts agreed that he had been a victim of prosecutorial misconduct and restored his citizenship.

This did not sit well with the Justice Department, which decided to find another way to denaturalize him. Relying on different allegations of war crimes, the Justice Department persuaded the courts once again that Demjanjuk was a Nazi war criminal ? perhaps not on par with Ivan the Terrible, but still a very bad guy ? and this time, it stuck. Demjanjuk lost his appeals, and the feds began deportation proceedings.

Today, Demjanjuk lost his last ditch appeal, in which he argued that the deportation order was invalid because it was signed by the Chief Immigration Judge as opposed to one of the line immigration judges. The Sixth wastes little time in rejecting this argument and affirming the order of deportation.

Of course, all of these proceedings may be an exercise in futility, because Demjanjuk?s deportation will require the U.S. to find a country that is willing to accept an aging war criminal. Good luck with all that.

Full post as published by Decision of the Day on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).