Couple mourn deported son, 26 Man gunned down in native Brazil; he was adopted at 8

Terry Oblander

The Plain Dealer

James Herbert remembers what he thought when his adoptive son, Joao, was deported to Brazil.

“When they sent him away, I knew I would never see him again,” the Orrville father said.

And he never did.

Joao Herbert, 26, a Brazilian who was adopted by a Medina County couple at age 8, was gunned down by three men about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at a home in Campinas, Brazil, the Brazilian Embassy in Washington confirmed yesterday.

The Diario Dao Povo newspaper in Campinas reported that police are trying to determine who shot him six times and why, according to an embassy employee who translated the Portuguese-language story.

Police interrogated and released a man who said he had been smoking marijuana with Herbert when the shooting occurred, the newspaper said.

It was 7.5 ounces of marijuana that got Herbert deported.

His life was sandwiched between American laws — a 1996 anti-terrorism law passed after the Oklahoma City bombing and the Child Citizenship Act of 2000.

Herbert’s parents never applied for citizenship for their adoptive son, opting to let their child make that decision for himself.

Joao never became a U.S. citizen.

Two months after graduating from Wadsworth High School, he was accused of offering to sell 7.5 ounces of marijuana to an undercover policeman. His conviction put him on the fast track to deportation under the anti-terrorism law.

The notion of deporting an orphan who had been adopted by Americans stirred passions among congressmen and others seeking passage of the Child Citizen Act that would bestow quick citizenship on other foreign-born children adopted in the future.

Mike Miller, a Baptist missionary from Stow, flew to Brazil to arrange for Joao’s burial and funeral services.

Miller’s wife, Dee, said she and her husband met Joao the day after he walked off a plane in November 2000 onto the soil of Brazil, a country he couldn’t remember, where they spoke a language he had forgotten.

The Millers, missionaries who worked in Campinas, found a home for Joao and helped him adjust to his new country.

Dee Miller, speaking by phone from her sister’s home in Jenison, Mich., said Joao had celebrity status for about a year among Brazilians who could not understand how a country could deport an orphan it had once embraced as a son.

“I think the whole public really fell in love with the kid,” she said.

He quickly learned Portuguese without an accent and began to market his language skills among Brazilian workers who saw mastery of English as a way out of poverty, she said. He had recently opened a school to teach English to adults.

Joao Herbert was robbed at gunpoint on several other occasions, his father said.

His mother, Nancy Saunders of Marshallville, flew to Brazil in January to see her new granddaughter, whom Joao had fathered with a Brazilian woman, James Herbert said.

Dee Miller said there seemed to be a void in Joao’s life.

“I think he was looking for happiness. I think he was looking for something,” she said. “I don’t know if he ever found it.”