An AP investigation revealed that former SS camp guards, missile engineers, and collaborators continued to receive payments after fleeing or being deported from the U.S.

Why? Apparently the Justice Department used it as a carrot to entice these Nazis to leave the U.S. without a fuss. From AP.

The deals allowed the Justice Department’s former Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, to skirt lengthy deportation hearings and increased the number of Nazis it expelled from the U.S.

But internal U.S. government records obtained by the AP reveal heated objections from the State Department to OSI’s practices. Social Security benefits became tools, U.S. diplomatic officials said, to secure agreements in which Nazi suspects would accept the loss of citizenship and voluntarily leave the United States.

“It’s absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years,” said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, a senior Democratic member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the loophole.

I can understand our government’s wanting these criminals off American soil, but  our offer to them for leaving should match Michael Corleone’s offer to Senator Geary: “Nothing.”