Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) captured 95-year old Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi SS labor camp guard living in Queens, New York, and deported him to Germany. President Donald Trump commended his administration’s decisive actions, especially ICE, for their removal of a war criminal.
Jakiw Palij
Many administrations and institutions have failed to complete the Nazi’s deportation order since 2004 due to diplomatic obstacles. Trump ensured its completion through what the White House describes as “extensive negotiations.”
The case was delayed for fourteen years because Germany had been less than cooperative in taking Palij because he is not a German citizen. According to U.S. Ambassador in Germany Richard Grenell, Trump had instructed him to prioritize the case.
Palij was an armed guard at Trawniki labor camp in 1943 in Poland, in which about 6,000 Jewish women, children, and men were shot in one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust.
Perfect Messaging
Trawniki Labor Camp
Whether done consciously or not, the action constituted a perfect response to the many critics of Trump who have proclaimed that he is a Nazi and that ICE is a fascist organization that must be abolished.
By deporting a real Nazi who has committed actual war crimes, Trump has demonstrated the utter vacuity of his detractors. By hyperinflating the usage of the term to smear anyone who disagrees with them, they have cheapened the deaths of the victims of the National Socialist regime.
Business as Usual
Trump has, in effect, educated the American people about what typically constitutes the work of ICE by highlighting their role in this deportation. If you read the fake news media, you get the impression that ICE mainly targets peaceful hardworking people of color whose only crime is to be in the country illegally.
The truth is that at the top of ICE’s priority list are the likes of Jakij Paliw: People with blood on their hands. If you only follow the mainstream media, you would never know this.
Take for instance this headline by pundit Andrew Klavan of the New York Times: “ICE detains man who was driving his pregnant wife to a hospital.” The “man” was wanted for murder.
What Now?
Will this deportation help change the perception of ICE and immigration laws? One swallow does not a summer make, but together with a host of good news for Trump and increasingly bizarre behavior by his most ardent critics, it pulls in the right direction.
Rachel Maddow
Dilbert-creator and popular Trump pundit Scott Adams claims that we may be seeing the first signs of Peak Trump Derangement Syndrome. He says that one of the signs to look for is people who appear to be embarrassed by members of their own team for going too far.
For instance, Rachel Maddow, who is not exactly well-known for being a voice of reason, put former CIA director on the spot for his comments about Trump’s action being “nothing short of treason.”
If Adams is right, we should start to see a gradual return to sanity in the media. Expect more reasonable coverage of ICE. Watch out for a decline in the Nazi or fascist label, which so often is hurled at people to the right of the far left.
