Ugo Carusi; Former U.S. Immigration Commissioner

Ugo Carusi, 92, the son of Italian immigrants who became U.S. immigration commissioner during World War II and helped resettle hundreds of thousands of European refugees after the war. A lawyer, he began federal service with the U.S. attorney general’s office in 1925 and retired from the government in 1967 after a trip to South Vietnam, where he studied the issue of refugees. He was private secretary and personal assistant to the attorney general until January, 1945, when he was appointed U.S. commissioner of immigration and naturalization. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman sought his recommendations on resettling European refugees in the United States. Truman eventually established a Displaced Persons Commission and 400,000 refugees found a new life in the United States. Carusi later served on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Committee for Hungarian Refugee Relief. In Washington on July 21.