> The craziest detail about this story is that, in the early 1980s, there was an organized effort to pressure the White House and pass legislation to make it impossible to deport Nazis. The effort was led by a group of Baltic and Eastern European ethnic affinity groups, largely out of Chicago. They were called "Americans For Due Process", and their ambition was to pass legislation requiring something like an international Nuremberg Tribunal process in order to anyone deported.

Some Baltic emigres to the west were clearly guilty to crimes against humanity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktors_Ar%C4%81js comes to mind.

I do not share your surprise about the pressure on the White House though. This gets easier to understand through a personal histories lens. Imagine you were a young male adult Latvian in 1940:

- 1940: native country annexed by the USSR. Most upper class deported to Siberia.

- 1941: native country occupied by Nazi Germany.

- 1942: forcibly conscripted into the Latvian Legion of the Waffen SS

- 1944-1945: native country occupied by the USSR again. escape to western Europe.

- 1946-1950: native country still occupied, move to the Chicago area like so many Baltic refugees

- 198x: native country still USSR occupied, USSR still actively targeting US exiles.

I can perfectly imagine such a person to: - condemn nazi crimes, particulary anti-semitic ones - always have been respectful towards ever human - be scared of deportation to an occupied native country without an independent judiciary - be very supportive of rigorous due process for Baltic emigres