DETROIT (Nov. 25) - A federal immigration judge has given the government permission to deport a former Nazi concentration camp guard who was a fugitive for several years until he was found hiding under a basement staircase.
Immigration Judge Larry Dean granted the government's request to deport Johann Leprich in a ruling issued Friday.
The 78-year-old retired machinist will be deported to his native Romania, or Germany or Hungary, said Greg Gagne, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
Leprich's lawyer says he is appealing the decision, and a separate legal challenge continues to a 1987 court proceeding to revoke his U.S. citizenship.
Leprich acknowledged serving during World War II in the Death's Head Battalion, a branch of the Nazi SS that supplied guards to concentration camps. He worked as a guard at Nazi-ruled Austria's Mauthausen concentration camp, where 119,000 people were executed or worked to death from 1938 to 1945.
Leprich came to the United States in 1952 and became a citizen in 1958. But the Justice Department later discovered his Nazi past and moved in 1986 to revoke his citizenship.
Following a 1987 denaturalization hearing, Leprich moved to Canada, but evidence surfaced that he continued to live secretly in the United States.
On July 1, authorities acting on a tip found him hiding behind a panel under the basement stairs at his family's home about 25 miles northeast of Detroit.
He has been in custody ever since.
I guess it's the right thing to do, but you can't help but wonder if perhaps he's a changed man.
