U.S. Seeks to Deport Bosnians Over War Crimes
Eric Lichtbleau reports on a removal effort by the U.S. government that is reminiscent of the efforts for decades to remove former Nazi persecutors from the United States.
Immigration officials are moving to deport at least 150 Bosnians in the United States who are believed to have taken part in war crimes and “ethnic cleansing” during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Officials have identified about 300 immigrants who they believe concealed their involvement in wartime atrocities when they came to the United States as part of a wave of Bosnian war refugees fleeing the violence there. The officials said the number of suspects could eventually top 600. “The more we dig, the more documents we find,” said Michael MacQueen, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement historian who has led many investigations in the agency’s war crimes section. The accused immigrants, many of them former soldiers from Bosnia, include a soccer coach in Virginia, a metal worker in Ohio and four hotel casino workers in Las Vegas.
KJ