Spittal an der Drau. On 18 May 1945, British extradited some Croatian ministers and Prime Minister Nikola Mandić to the Yugoslav authorities. Artuković was not extradited, but he was released soon with remaining ministers. He left the British occupational zone, then went via the American to the French occupational zone, where his family was. In November 1946, he crossed the Austria–Switzerland border. In Switzerland, he declared a false name, Alois Anich, and a false visa. In February 1947, he asked Swiss authorities to get a Nansen passport. Some months later, they found out his real identity. Switzerland offered him to keep his Nansen passport provided that he and his family would leave Switzerland until 15 July 1947. Exactly at that date, they took a plane to Ireland. About one year later, they entered the United States on a tourist visa and settled in Seal Beach, California. He worked at a company owned by his brother. As an accused war criminal, Porajmos perpetrator and Ustaše official, he did not qualify for legal status in the United States and remained in the country after overstaying his visa. In July 1945, the Yugoslav State Commission for Investigation of Crimes of Occupiers and Their Allies declared Artuković a war criminal. The Government of the FPR Yugoslavia made a request for his extradition on 29 August 1951. Their request met with a seven years long bureaucratic delay in Los Angeles, California due to the influence of the Croatian émigré community and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, to whom Artuković and his family had appealed. On 15 January 1959, U.S. Commissioner Theodore Hocke rejected Yugoslavia's extradition request; the INS's grounds for refusing extradition was "...since the crimes for which extradition was requested were deemed 'political' by the court, if Artukovic were deported to Yugoslavia, he would be "subject to physical persecution". When the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) raised the question of the legal basis of the stay in the US of a large number of associates of and/or collaborationists with Nazi Germany, the Yugoslav authorities, under the initiative of the Special Investigation Court of the U.S. Department of Justice, renewed their request for Artuković's extradition. He was arrested on 14 November 1984, and a court process began in New York. Artuković remained in custody until his deportation. In 1985, he was transferred to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners