( CNN ) -- An immigration judge with the U.S. Justice Department has granted a stay to John Demjanjuk , the Nazi war crimes suspect who had been ordered deported to Germany , his lawyer said Friday . John Demjanjuk appears in court in Jerusalem in 1987 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity . John Broadley said the stay was ordered after Judge Wayne Iskra in Arlington , Virginia , decided to reopen deportation proceedings . `` In the four years since his deportation was ordered , his health has seriously deteriorated , '' Broadley told CNN in a telephone interview . Broadley had argued that Sunday 's plan to send Demjanjuk to Germany , which has issued an arrest warrant for him , and putting him through the rigors of a trial there would be tantamount to torture . Demjanjuk -- a Ukrainian -- is accused of involvement during World War II in killings at a Nazi German death camp in Poland . He denies the allegations . The retired auto worker celebrated his 89th birthday Friday with his wife at their home in Cleveland . Broadley said Demjanjuk suffers from pre-leukemia , kidney problems , spinal problems and `` a couple of types of gout . '' German authorities issued the warrant for Demjanjuk on March 10 , accusing him of being an accessory to 29,000 counts of murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp from March to September 1943 . Demjanjuk says he fought in the Soviet army and later was a prisoner of war held by the Germans . Demjanjuk has been fighting charges of Nazi war crimes for well over two decades . He was extradited from the United States to Israel , where he was convicted in 1986 of being `` Ivan the Terrible , '' a guard at the notorious Treblinka extermination camp . The conviction was overturned by Israeli courts on appeal and he returned to the United States . The United States filed new charges against him in 1999 , again alleging that he had been a concentration camp guard . A federal judge found in 2002 that Demjanjuk had been a guard at the Sobibor death camp , where a quarter of a million people were killed during World War II , and at two other concentration camps . Prosecutors argued that Demjanjuk concealed his history when he came to the United States in 1952 . He was stripped of U.S. citizenship and has been awaiting deportation since 2005 , despite fighting his case all the way to the Supreme Court . CNN 's Diana Magnay contributed to this report .
NEW : Judge files deportation case on a former death camp guard . NEW : John Demjanjuk 's attorney says client 's " ` ` has seriously deteriorated . '' Demjanjuk , 89 , has been fighting charges of war crimes for more than two decades . Germany suspects him of being accessory to 29,000 murders at Sobibor .