INS detains Ukrainian awaiting deportation; government will not discuss future with his family (10/17/04)

INS detains Ukrainian awaiting deportation;
government will not discuss future with his family

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service abruptly detained an ailing, 81-year-old Ukrainian American man on September 24 and he is being held by the Department of Homeland Security at a federal detention center in Florida. Officials would not discuss Mykola Wasylyk's future with his family and his son told The Ukrainian Weekly that he fears the government will deport his father without notifying the family.

The elder Mr. Wasylyk was accused by the U.S. Justice Department of participating in the persecution of Jewish civilians during World War II. Documents filed by the Office of Special Investigations, the government's Nazi-hunting arm, said that Mr. Wasylyk was trained at the Trawniki camp in Poland and then served as an armed guard at the slave labor camp there, as well as at the Budzyn slave labor camp.

"Their claim is that he's a flight risk," Roman Wasylyk said of his father's detention, referring to what he said were allusions made by INS officials that his father would attempt to dodge a March 2004 ruling by a U.S. court that ordered his deportation from the United States on charges that he lied to officials when he immigrated to the U.S. in 1949.

"How can he be a flight risk if he doesn't have a passport and takes 10 different medications?" Roman Wasylyk asked The Weekly on October 12. Pursuant to a July 2001 decision by a district court in Syracuse, N.Y., which revoked Mykola Wasylyk's citizenship, the elder Mr. Wasylyk surrendered his passport and other related documents several years ago.

Immigration officials detained Mr. Wasylyk in Florida during what his son called a routine meeting, his second with immigration officials. It was the last time Mykola Wasylyk saw his wife, and the family said the couple was given no prior notice that the man was going to be detained. "We were doing what they wanted us to do," Roman Wasylyk said. His father initiated the meetings with immigration officials so that he could understand what had to be done in order for him to comply with the government's decision to deport him.

Roman Wasylyk said the Department of Homeland Security, division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is in charge of his father's case and they are holding him at the Krome federal detention center on the outskirts of Miami, Fla. He has been in detention for the past three weeks, and he observed his 81st birthday and his 46th wedding anniversary while detained.

"They are holding him because he has been deemed/ruled 'deportable,'" Roman Wasylyk said. "They will not provide any information as to when or where they will send him, because this is a security issue."

Michael Rozos, the field office director in Florida for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division at the Department of Homeland Security, was not available for comment on Mr. Wasylyk's case. However, a woman who answered the phone there, Denise Lundberg, did acknowledge Mr. Wasylyk's file number and said Mr. Rozos would return a reporter's phone call. However, at press time, The Weekly had not heard from Mr. Rozos.

On March 24, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the Board of Immigration Appeals "affirmed that Wasylyk is subject to deportation because of his wartime service." Following that decision, Mr. Wasylyk applied and was awaiting a stay because of health reasons, his son said, and he was in the process of cooperating with immigration officials.

Following that decision, Mykola Wasylyk appealed to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in a letter dated April 11. He said: "As I mentioned in my previous letter (dated October 11, 2002), I have been presented by the OSI [Office of Special Investigations], through a carefully orchestrated rash of lies, as having participated willingly and voluntarily in the German army (as opposed to being forced to) and am currently being maligned and hounded continuously, again at the hands of the OSI, as a Nazi collaborator. I am still in the process of being deported, and my time is running out. No one has addressed this situation on my behalf. I received no acknowledgment or any form of advice from you or your office regarding my first letter to you, and that leads me to believe that you may not have seen it at all. Medical records submitted by me at the request of the BIA (Board of Immigration Appeals) have been disregarded. I am up against a wall. Please consider my plea for a waive of deportation now."

Roman Wasylyk said that his family had not received a reply to his father's letter.

In an open letter circulated on the Internet and addressed to "Dear friends," Mykola Wasylyk's daughter, Minka Wasylyk Hrechniw, appealed for help. "My mother is calling anyone and everyone she knows who may be able to at least get him home to pack his own suitcase. We're hoping for house arrest at this point, which is highly unlikely," she wrote.

"We are heartbroken and numb, and I, for one, am bitter and angry, but we are remaining strong for my mother," Ms. Hrechniw noted.

"It seems like a slap in the face. My father has had two hip replacement surgeries" and two stents put into his heart to open up clogged arteries, Roman Wasylyk said. When they last spoke to each other, Mr. Wasylyk said his father complained of poor treatment by the staff at the detention center. He told his son that his medications were distributed irregularly and, on several occasions, were not given at all. As a result, the man's blood pressure on one occasion climbed to a dangerous reading of 240/120, Roman Wasylyk said.

"I want people to understand what is happening here," Mr. Wasylyk's son said. "It is a tragedy that shouldn't happen. It's just wrong." He said his father is confined to a room with 80 other men and can only make occasional collect calls to his family.

"If we get a call from him, then we know he's still in the country. If we don't hear from him after several days, then we'll start worrying," Roman Wasylyk said.

His mother "is staying strong but she's obviously having a tough time with this. The guy has been a model citizen," Roman Wasylyk said.

The family's first priority is to get Mr. Wasylyk out of jail. "It's a barbed wire prison," Roman Wasylyk said. "You can call it a detention center, but it's a friggin prison." He said the family's second priority is to see if Ukraine would accept Mr. Wasylyk. And if Ukraine is unwilling to take him "then what does that mean?" Roman Wasylyk asked. "Is he stateless, or does he sit in jail for the rest of his life?"

Rep. Maurice Hinchey later told the Wasylyk family that Ukraine had decided it would not take his father, only adding to the uncertainty of the man's future, The Ukrainian Weekly learned as the paper was going to press. Roman Wasylyk also said his family met with an immigration lawyer to discuss what options are now open to his father.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service did not return repeated phone calls from The Weekly which sought to clarify Mr. Wasylyk's situation.

Christopher A. Wray, the assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, first announced that an immigration appeals court had cleared the way for Mr. Wasylyk's deportation from the United States on March 23. The Department of Justice said in a statement released on March 24 that the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that Mr. Wasylyk was subject to deportation because of his wartime activities from April to November of 1943.

Mr. Wasylyk had his U.S. citizenship revoked by a federal district court in December 2001. In October 2002, a federal immigration court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Wasylyk be deported from the United States.

Mr. Wasylyk's case is one of several against Ukrainian Americans that were originally filed by the Office of Special Investigations.

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