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Deportation upheld for ex-SS guard

WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- The Board of Immigration Appeals has upheld the deportation to Germany of a Detroit-area man who was an SS concentration camp guard during World War II.

The Justice Department announced the ruling in Washington Friday.

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Johann Leprich, 78, served as an armed guard at the notorious Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the department said.

An immigration judge earlier concluded Leprich had entered the United States illegally from Canada in April 2003. Leprich has admitted he fled the United States to Canada in 1987 shortly before a U.S. district court revoked his U.S. citizenship on grounds relating to his service to Nazi Germany.

Leprich, an ethnic German born in Romania, immigrated to the United States from Germany and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1958.

Inmates at the Mauthausen in Nazi-annexed Austria were beaten, tortured and killed by a variety of methods, including gassing, hanging, starvation, strangulation and shooting.

Leprich remains in government custody.

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