cannabisnews.com: Man Adopted By U.S. Family Is Deported 





Man Adopted By U.S. Family Is Deported 
Posted by FoM on November 18, 2000 at 11:10:30 PT
Kevin G. Hall, Mercury News Rio de Janeiro Bureau
Source: San Jose Mercury News 
Among the men with weather-beaten faces who lined the peach-colored walls of the Arsenal da Esperanca shelter, waiting in the Friday afternoon sun for a free dinner and a bunk, was a frightened 22-year-old from Ohio. Many of the men are alcoholics, jobless or both. All of them are homeless. Joao Herbert had been deported to Brazil a day earlier by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) because he was caught selling a small amount of marijuana before his application to become an American citizen was processed. 
The Herbert case is likely to reverberate throughout the United States and Latin America. It is a sad tale of a well-meaning attempt to crack down on drug trafficking, inflexible regulators and a governor who rejected the unanimous decision of his parole board to grant clemency and avoid deporting a first-time offender convicted of a minor crime. Orphaned as an infant in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, Herbert was adopted by an American couple in 1986, when he was 8. His adoptive parents failed to naturalize him, however, and when he was 18, police arrested him for selling 7.5 ounces of marijuana to an undercover officer in Wadsworth, Ohio, outside Cleveland. Herbert was sentenced to probation as a first-time offender, but he was imprisoned under a 1996 federal law that requires the deportation of non-citizens convicted of drug crimes. To escape incarceration, Herbert stopped fighting extradition after 28 months and accepted deportation to the country of his birth, even though he's now a stranger to Brazil. He remembers no Portuguese, and aside from his adoptive parents in Ohio, he has no one to call family. A fan of the Cleveland Browns, he will now have to learn about Brazilian football, the kind that's played with the feet and called soccer in the United States. ``I think everything will be hard for him,'' said Isabel del Pozo, whose Arsenal da Esperanca (Hope Arsenal) agreed to take Herbert in. Brazilians, who consider his U.S. treatment harsh, can't get enough of Herbert. More than two dozen reporters overwhelmed him at the airport here late Thursday, and, as his eyes widened in horror, crammed into his elevator with their microphones. As they swarmed into the shelter for an invited tour Friday, Herbert escaped with a family friend. He had not returned by early evening. Vasco Monteiro, a director of the shelter, said he had received several calls from people and companies wanting to help Herbert, ``so I don't think he will stay with us for very long.'' In July, Ohio Gov. Robert Taft rejected a parole board's clemency recommendation and described Herbert as a drug trafficker who had shown no remorse. Herbert's family says its adopted son is a distraught young man who now regrets having fallen in with the wrong crowd. Immigration and Naturalization Service official Karen Kraushaar said in a telephone interview that the agency had no discretion under the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. ``As a law enforcement agency, it is our responsibility to enforce the law, and if we start enforcing the law on a selective basis it is a very slippery slope,'' Kraushaar said. She said more than 69,000 legal and illegal immigrants were deported for criminal acts in fiscal year 2000, which ended Sept. 30. Some 44 percent of those were drug-related deportations like the Herbert case, she said. Deportations totaled 181,572 in fiscal year 2000. The INS is weighing policy changes to give its attorneys greater leeway in determining which deportation prosecutions they pursue. They will come too late for Herbert. Additionally, Congress passed a law this year giving children adopted abroad by U.S. citizens immediate citizenship. President Clinton signed it Oct. 30, and it is retroactive for children now aged 18 and younger. That doesn't help Herbert, either, since he's 22. ``We think that there is a Kafkaesque situation for adopted children coming to this country,'' Rubens Barbosa, Brazil's ambassador to the United States, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. Barbosa said Brazil had accepted Herbert for ``humanitarian reasons.'' Note: Brazilian's Treatment Reflects Strict Laws Against Drug Trafficking, Inflexible Rules. Complete Title: Man Adopted By U.S. Family Is Deported For Small Pot SaleNews Article Courtesy Of MapInc.http://mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1717/a10.htmlSource: San Jose Mercury News (CA)Author: Kevin G. Hall, Mercury News Rio de Janeiro BureauPublished: November 18, 2000Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury NewsAddress: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190Fax: (408) 271-3792Contact: letters sjmercury.comWebsite: http://www.sjmercury.com/Related Article:Inmate Gets Hope To Remain in U.S. http://cannabisnews.com/news/6/thread6467.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by kaptinemo on November 19, 2000 at 07:53:27 PT:
Weird sense of priorities
Immigration and Naturalization Service official Karen Kraushaar said in a telephone interview that the agency had no discretion under the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. ``As a law enforcement agency, it is our responsibility to enforce the law, and if we start enforcing the law on a selective basis it is a very slippery slope,'' Kraushaar said. She said more than 69,000 legal and illegal immigrants were deported for criminal acts in fiscal year 2000, which ended Sept. 30. Some 44 percent of those were drug-related deportations like the Herbert case, she said. Deportations totaled 181,572 in fiscal year 2000. Hmm...let's see now. In 1989, the US engaged in a wholly illegal invasion of the sovereign nation of Panama, ostensibly because its' leader, Manuel Noriega, was supposedly dealing. Noriega was not an American citizen, but he was grabbed as if he was...and thousands of Panamanians died in the process. I'd say that that was very selective aherence to law enforcement, wouldn't you? To kill or injure thousands in a blatantly illegal act...to arrest one man? I wonder how many of the people who lost loved ones in this little 'police action' feel about the righteousness of US law? But Noriega was the CIA's boy. A School of the America's graduate, no less. I guess he learned his lessons a little too well.
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Comment #2 posted by freedom fighter on November 18, 2000 at 21:16:25 PT
I as an amerikan
sure feel he is a lucky dude. In time he will learn new language and he will know that Amerika is not the place to live. He will know that Amerika is no longer free. 
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Comment #1 posted by MikeEEEEE on November 18, 2000 at 12:12:04 PT
What if?
What if he was selling alcohol?I could see how the US makes enemies. This deportation is one of the ugly faces of prohibition.
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