Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday the arrest of a former World War II concentration camp guard living in Clinton Township.

Johann Leprich, 77, was taken into custody on immigration-related charges Wednesday night by special agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with assistance from officers from the Clinton Township Police Department and Macomb County Sheriff's Department.

ICE agents apparently found Leprich hiding beneath the stairs in his home.

"This arrest makes clear that those who participated in the atrocities of the holocaust will not escape the determined reach of U.S. law enforcement, regardless of how much time has passed," Ashcroft said.

The Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations asked a federal immigration court in Detroit to deport Leprich (pictured, left) for his service as an armed guard at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

Leprich faces a bond hearing some time next week.

Investigation Uncovers Brutal History

Sam Offen (pictured, right), a holocaust survivor who lives in the metro Detroit area, was at the concentration camp where Leprich served. Offen, who lost 15 members of his family to the holocaust, said that Leprich's arrest gives him a sense of closure, Local 4 reported.

SURVIVOR Holocaust Survivor Tells His Story Sam Offen speaks on occasion at the Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield.

"I'm not looking for revenge, but I am looking for justice," Offen said.

Authorities say Leprich immigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a naturalized citizen in 1958. In a 1987 decision, a U.S. District Judge found that Leprich had served as an armed SS Death's Head guard at Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Nazi-occupied Austria from late 1943 to at least April of 1944.

The Court reportedly found that inmates at the camp were used as slave laborers, and that many were starved, beaten, tortured and killed by a variety of methods -- gassing, hanging, electrocution, drowning, burning, starving and shooting.

Leprich's citizenship was revoked following the trial and his attorney told federal authorities that his client had left the United States. In 1997, various media sources reported that Leprich had been seen in Windsor, Ontario, and was believed to be living there.

Wednesday's arrest was a culmination of an investigation involving federal and local authorities following leads that Leprich was either living in or visiting Michigan.

According to federal reports, since 1979, 71 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and 57 have been removed from the United States.