Ex-Nazi guard argues ambiguity in US deportation rules

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A retired steelworker who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard should not be deported because the US State Department - rightly or wrongly - granted him a visa in 1956, his lawyer argued Monday. Anton Geiser, 83, of Sharon, Pennsylvania, did not cite his Nazi ties on his visa application, but neither is he accused of lying about the matter. Geiser's investigative file from the period is lost, so it is not clear whether the person who would have interviewed him for the visa knew he had been a guard. Geiser's attorney, Adrian N. Roe, said guards not characterized as war criminals were sometimes allowed into the country. "The government is rethinking the wisdom of that policy decided by the State Department 50 years ago," Roe argued before the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals. Geiser is among the 80 to 100 naturalized US citizens deported or threatened with deportation because of alleged Nazi ties, a government lawyer said. The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation has been pursuing them for the past three decades.