(CN) - The 1st Circuit upheld the deportation order for a 95-year-old Lithuanian native who has lived in the United States since 1950 and who allegedly lied on his citizenship application to conceal his part in the Nazi liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland.
The Boston-based federal appeals court said it lacked jurisdiction to review an immigration judge's decision to deport Vladas Zajanckauskas after his citizenship was revoked in 2005 for fraud, nearly 60 years after he first arrived in the United States.
A federal judge had determined that Zajanckauskas "had been deployed to Warsaw with a detachment of Trawniki-trained guards who participated in the Nazi liquidation of the Jewish ghetto there, and that lied about his wartime whereabouts by concealing this fact in his application for an entry visa," according to the ruling.
The immigration judge based the removal order on these findings and on Zajanckauskas's sworn statement that he "thinks" he would lie again in order to stay in the United States.
On appeal, Zajanckauskas argued that he is eligible for a waiver forgiving his fraud based on his age, the amount of time he has lived in the United States, his health and the large family he would be forced to leave.
The three-judge panel ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to change the removal order, because that ruling had been made at the discretion of the immigration judge.
"Absent authority to review the discretionary ground, any opinion of ours reviewing the nondiscretionary ground could not affect the final order's validity," the court concluded.
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