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[mvan1]

 

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Adopted at age 5, Brazilian is deported after more than 30 years in the USA

Despite the Brazilian authorities' refusal to grant travel documents, the US government forced Paul Fernando Schreiner to embark illegally on Brazil; he does not speak Portuguese and has no relatives in the country. "He should not have to suffer a second time," says foster mother.

By Associated Press

05/06/2019 20h08  Updated há 25 minutos

 

---

 

Paul Fernando Schreiner in Niterói - Photo: AP Photo / Leo Correa

 

Paul Fernando Schreiner walks around a room with few furniture, wondering if today will be different from all other days.

Niteroi's air humidity troubles him, it does not look anything like the dry heat of Phoenix, Arizona, where the 36-year-old man lived when he was deported from the United States last year.

Conversations are rare for Schreiner, since he does not speak Portuguese and few people speak another language. But language is just an issue: the food and even the sports Brazilians accompany - Schreiner likes football more than football - do not fit. Inside your head, every day is a struggle against boredom, loneliness and despair.

"I am anything but Brazilian," said Schreiner, who was adopted in Brazil by an American family three decades ago. "I'm an American."

The US government disagrees, underscoring the increasingly harsh line the Trump government is taking with legal residents deemed deportable.

 

Undated photo courtesy of Roger and Rosanna Schreiner of his adopted son Paul Fernando Schreiner - Photo: Courtesy of the Schreiner Family via AP

 

US immigration authorities went so far as to expel Schreiner that they may have violated Brazilian law and made it virtually impossible for him to exercise his alleged Brazilian citizenship.

For US adoption groups, the forced removal of people like Schreiner violates basic human rights and amounts to a threefold increase: the affected were abandoned when children in their home countries are abandoned a second time by their adoptive country and then are sent to a place where they have no family, do not speak the language and have few skills to survive.

"He should not have to suffer a second time," his mother, Rosanna Schreiner, says tearfully from her home in a suburb of Seward, Nebraska.

 

Roger and Rosanna Schreiner talk about the deportation of their son Paul - Photo: AP Photo / Nati Harnik

Schreiner never naturalized as a US citizen, but lived as an American for 30 years. He was legally adopted at the age of 5, had a birth certificate in Nebraska, a Social Security number, and paid taxes.

US adoption groups estimate that between 35,000 and 75,000 adopted in the United States could be in such a situation today, many incorrectly believing that they are already citizens. The Children's Citizenship Act of 2000, signed by President Bill Clinton, aimed at simplifying the process, making the citizenship automatic for children adopted abroad.

 

But there was one exception: for children already in America, only those under 18 were eligible when the law came into force. For a matter of only six weeks, the law did not apply to Schreiner.

The petition for citizenship based on green card eligibility was also ruled out: when he was 21, Schreiner was convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old.

After spending nearly eight years in prison in Nebraska, Schreiner was able to rebuild his life. He moved to Arizona, began working in pool cleaners and carpenter firms, and developed close relationships with Jason Young, a pastor at Heritage Baptist Church in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix.

"He was working, getting used to life after prison. So I get a phone call one day saying that he was in prison again, this time through ICE, "said Young, referring to Immigration and Customs. "I answered something like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

 

Detention of immigrants

 

When agents surrounded his truck at 5 o'clock in the morning when he left for work on October 23, 2017, Schreiner was not entirely surprised. Shortly after his legal problems began in 2004, he was notified by the ICE that there was a deportation order against him.

But a removal order did not always lead to deportation during the administrations of Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama.

Schreiner also had the support of Brazil.

"The official position of the Brazilian government - expressed in the Child and Adolescent Law - is that adoption is an irrevocable act, which gives the adopted child the same rights as those who live with their biological parents," Alexandre Addor Neto, then Brazil's consul general in Chicago, wrote to Homeland Security in 2004 in response to a US request for Brazil to issue travel documents for Schreiner's deportation.

 

 

Schreiner uses his computer in his room in Niterói - Photo: AP Photo / Leo Correa

"The Brazilian government does not issue travel documents for the purpose of deportation of a Brazilian in this situation, unless that person freely expresses his clear and unequivocal desire to return to Brazil, which was not the case of Mr. Schreiner" the letter he said.

After Schreiner's arrest in 2017, Brazilian officials again denied the US government's request for documents to deport him.

Weeks turned into eight months at an immigrant detention center in Florence, Arizona. According to Schreiner and his father, Roger Schreiner, Brazilian consular officers in Los Angeles, who has jurisdiction over Arizona, said that he could refuse to board a plane.

 

'Wanted criminal'

 

Then, on June 12, 2018, Schreiner was agreed and informed that he was being deported.

"Brazil is a corrupt government and will let you in," Schreiner told an ICE agent that he did not have a passport.

Schreiner said he had heard that if he made any confusion, he would be put in a "burrito bag," a kind of fair jacket used to restrain prisoners.

In a statement, ICE only said that Schreiner had been deported and declined to comment.

 

Handcuffed and accompanied by two agents, Schreiner said he was taken on a commercial flight from Phoenix to New York. However, in New York, American Airlines employees did not want to board Schreiner on the flight to Rio de Janeiro.

The only documentation that ICE agents had for Schreiner was a "certificate of nationality" that the Los Angeles consulate, yielding to US pressure, had issued. He listed a single name, "Fernando," and the arbitrary date of birth that Schreiner received when he was adopted.

"He is a wanted criminal in Brazil," the agents told the air authorities, who gave in and let him on board.

Once in Rio de Janeiro, there were more questions.

 

Undated photo provided by Roger and Rosanna Schreiner shows his adopted son Paul Fernando Schreiner (right) alongside the other family members - Photo: Courtesy of the Schreiner Family via AP

For several hours, Schreiner said US agents and the Brazilian federal police had discussed whether they should let him in. After a series of phone calls and heated conversations, Schreiner was taken by a gift shop to the front of the airport. He had the handcuffs loose and the agents left.

Brazilian federal police have not responded to several requests from the Associated Press for comments. In a statement, Brazil's Foreign Ministry said the consulate in Los Angeles was "instructed to formally confirm, before the US authorities, the Brazilian nationality of Schreiner, who had a final order of deportation against him."

 

"I do not understand how someone living in the US could be abandoned like this," said Segisfredo Silva Vanderlai, a 68-year-old pastor with whom Schreiner lived. "It was thrown away like human trash."

 

Memories and regrets

 

Schreiner does not remember much of his early years. His parents adopted him from an orphanage in Nova Iguaçu, a Rio municipality full of favelas controlled by heavily armed narco-traffickers and paramilitary groups.

"I remember my older sister picking up trash cans for me and finding bananas and other food to eat," Schreiner said. "I remember fear, running and hiding from older children with guns."

 

'I'm not Brazilian, I'm American', says Schreiner - Photo: AP Photo / Leo Correa

At one point, Schreiner and his sister ended up in a house. It was there that her sister was taken away by people Schreiner only remembers as "bad men" and never heard of her again. Schreiner said he ended up in an orphanage where he was sexually molested, trauma that led to bed-wetting until adolescence.

Life on a farm in Nebraska with four other foster brothers was happy, though Schreiner struggled with his identity. Because of this, his parents said they postponed his becoming a US citizen until he was older and able to fully participate in the decision.

 

"It was a big miscalculation on our part," said Roger Schreiner. "It never occurred to us that any of our children could go to jail."

 

Uncertain future

 

Almost a year after being deported, Schreiner is still in limbo.

He was unable to obtain a Brazilian birth certificate, an RG or a CPF needed to work.

Entering the country through the back door with a citizenship certificate that refers to him just as "Fernando" has been an obstacle for civil registration officials. Another is that there is no original record of his birth, a common situation of adoptees and other poor people in Brazil.

Vanderlai and others have tried to help Schreiner navigate the bureaucracy. His best hope, if he gets a Brazilian passport, is to try to immigrate to Canada, where he speaks the language and would be closer to the family.

"The deportation is for illegal immigrants," Schreiner said. "I did not ask to go to the US and I did not cross the border."

[paborn]

Nothing the current administration does makes me proud.  Why even write a law that, while trying to clean up a ness, reads only "under 18" why?  

[Latbear4blk]

We need an emoji for Angry.

[Kevie770]

Sad thing is this doesn’t even register on the scale of the fucked up shit the USA has done.  

[sanddunes]

Wow his adopted parents really dropped the ball by not getting him US citizenship at the time he was adopted.  Their explanation of why they didn’t makes zero sense - why would he need to be old enough to “fully participate in the decision?” 

Of course him committing statutory rape and being a convicted felon certainly didn’t help either.

After living in Brazil for 1 year you would think he would have learned a good amount of Portuguese by now?  And getting a CPF is not that hard.  

[likeohmygod]

Make America Great Again!

Quote

Wow his adopted parents really dropped the ball by not getting him US citizenship at the time he was adopted.  Their explanation of why they didn’t makes zero sense - why would he need to be old enough to “fully participate in the decision?”  

Yeah doesn't make sense to me....but I know at least 2 people who got the citizenship late due to a similar parents decision. Surely they did not got deported back to their "home" countries.

[Riobard]

Actually, four child sexual assault convictions in his early twenties. 

[SolaceSoul]

7 hours ago, sanddunes said:

And getting a CPF is not that hard

It may not be hard if you are a US citizen with a passport and have the right documents. But in this case, he does not.

”Entering the country through the back door with a citizenship certificate that refers to him just as "Fernando" has been an obstacle for civil registration officials. Another is that there is no original record of his birth, a common situation of adoptees and other poor people in Brazil.”

[SolaceSoul]

1 hour ago, Riobard said:

Actually, four child sexual assault convictions in his early twenties. 

Where are you getting your information that it is four? According to this CBS article:

”Applying for citizenship based on eligibility as a green-card holder was also out: When he was 21, Schreiner was convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old.”

Edited June 7, 2019 by SolaceSoul

[Riobard]

A newspaper closer to his home base. May be sloppy reporting. Or perhaps they were offenses that emerged following initial imprisonment. In any case, not the best 'poster boy' for this deportation trend.

One article reports four (adopted?) brothers but the family photo depicts two brothers and two sisters, all apparently younger. Though I do not know the gender of the minors assaulted. 

Question is: how did he make it through nearly a decade behind bars as a convicted "pedophile". He may have some survival skills. 

Edited June 7, 2019 by Riobard

[SolaceSoul]

Hmmm. Something is going on with that article. Because the same article is listed at the CBS News page, and the AP is listed as the original source from June 5. But in the CBS version that extra paragraph is not included:

 

[mvan1]

 

 

 

1 hour ago, SolaceSoul said:

Hmmm. Something is going on with that article. Because the same article is listed at the CBS News page, and the AP is listed as the original source from June 5. But in the CBS version that extra paragraph is not included:

 

 

You are right, there is something wrong with the article. 

There is also something wrong with different posts above where it was said that the Brazilian had four convictions for statutory rape.  No news source reported that.  The same poster also said the Brazilian spent almost a decade in prison for the crimes while the actual time in prison was six years eight months.  Almost a decade?  Hmmm!

I think someone does not like that Brazilian.  

[Riobard]

1 hour ago, mvan1 said:

You are right, there is something wrong with the article. 

There is also something wrong with different posts above where it was said that the Brazilian had four convictions for statutory rape.  No news source reported that.  The same poster also said the Brazilian spent almost a decade in prison for the crimes while the actual time in prison was six years eight months.  Almost a decade?  Hmmm!

I think someone does not like that Brazilian.  

There is no Brazilian at the centre of this thread! I thought that was the point. 

Only a poor stateless sod who through the confluence of unfortunate circumstances was homeless and abused in formative favela years, had dumbass adoptive parents big on cuddly farm animals but dismissive of the importance of naturalization process steps, had non-addressed psychosexual developmental problems, endured "almost eight years" incarceration (why should rounding up to a decade suggest a dim view of him or of the sentence duration when sex offenders usually end up under scrutiny in perpetuity anyway?), and - it gets even better - numbnuts bornagains who think pool maintenance in arid Arizona a few degrees of separation from scantily clad pubescent girls is a great career move for a sex offender apparently in progressive reform/rehab who just might be better off avoiding that type of temptation. 

A veritable tragedy of errors that simply mirrors the comedy of interpretive errors in the MO of forum posts. Sheesh.

The article from the Nebraska newspaper in his former jurisdiction referencing subsequent convictions, if factually correct, and the judge's commentary on record, may simply add insight into why the US officials are so adamant about their decision. 

Why should there be surprise at the inconsistencies among news reports? Was the original article not oriented to critique these types of deportation justifications? Neither side of the issue would dare spin the narrative?

Edited June 7, 2019 by Riobard

[SolaceSoul]

Possibly a topic related to where this conversation seems to be headed:

Six states in the USA will require you to register as a sex offender if you are convicted of being one of the 14% of American men who have solicited someone for sex (no matter the age, and no matter if you are paying or being paid).  

The Florida House and Senate just passed a bill that requires all those convicted of soliciting a prostitute to be in a publicly published registry. The bill is going to the governor’s desk.

https://reason.com/2019/05/09/florida-is-creating-a-new-sex-offender-registry-just-for-prostitution-customers/?amp

Edited June 8, 2019 by SolaceSoul

[Riobard]

Along with the stripper hooboy union trend in Atlanta this will give Mississipi and the Carolinas' clubs a fighting chance. But Kansas ... Toto, NOOOOOO!!!

I will have to try to get the word out to some of the Montreal mecs that make occasional pilgrimages to Johnson's.

Edited June 8, 2019 by Riobard