Joao Herbert

Joao Herbert was born in Brazil and spent much of his early childhood as an orphan on the streets of Sao Paolo. He was adopted by an Ohio couple at the age of eight. When he was seventeen, his parents discovered that he had not automatically become a U.S. citizen upon his adoption, and submitted a naturalization application. However, Herbert turned eighteen before the processing of the application was complete. Soon after his eighteenth birthday, he pleaded guilty to attempting to sell marijuana and was sentenced to probation and participation in a drug treatment program. Despite the fact that he was a first-time offender who had served no jail time, he was placed in immigration detention for twenty months and then deported to Brazil as an “aggravated felon.” Herbert had no friends or family in Brazil and no longer spoke any Portuguese. Once in Brazil, he began teaching English and became known as "the English professor." His father, who is quadriplegic, was unable to travel to Brazil to visit him. In May of 2004, Herbert was shot and killed in the industrial city of Campinas, 60 miles northwest of Sao Paolo.

Status: Deported, and murdered