United States deportation officers on Wednesday night deported an Israeli citizen back to the Jewish State after he served a six-month prison term in New York for conspiracy to export military technology to the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah.
Tomer Grinberg, 33, was found guilty in US District Court, Southern District of New York last April of being a co-conspirator in attempting to ship night-vision goggles and infrared aiming scopes to Hezbollah, whose publicly stated goals include destruction of the state of Israel.
On May 19, 2004, Grinberg and a co-conspirator were arrested as they prepared to ship the restricted military equipment to Greece for recipients from Hezbollah.
Grinberg, of Na’Ria, Israel, was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for deportation after completing his criminal sentence at the federal correctional institution in Allenwood, PA, on December 28. During his sentence, ICE put Grinberg into removal proceedings and an immigration judge ordered him removed last November.
In fiscal year 2006, 190,349 illegal aliens including 87,888 with criminal convictions were removed from the US.