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Inside story

Detained American brothers face deportation

February 20th, 2008 issue

By Ondřej Bouda

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST

Jon Moore, 31, and Joseph Carrano, 32, say the extent of their problems is the result of racial prejudice. enlarge

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST

Moore and Carrano say they have nothing to go back to in the United States and they want to stay here. enlarge

Staff Writer

Many foreigners living in the Czech Republic have found themselves worrying about the new visa rules that came with entry to the Schengen zone. But one particular story of two Americans is more extreme than most.

Earlier this month, numerous headlines started surfacing about two men from the United States who had been detained for overstaying their 90-day visa limit and sent to a refugee camp. Such reports left a number of questions unanswered — namely why they were detained and why they want to stay in the Czech Republic.

On Feb. 15, The Prague Post traveled to the Poštorná detention facility in south Moravia where they are being held to get their side of the story.

The detained Americans are brothers Joseph Carrano, 32, and Jon Moore, 31. They say they came to the Czech Republic in search of their native Czech parents, from whom they were separated as children. Instead of a family reunion, the brothers found themselves arrested, locked up and awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings. Still, there’s no mistaking their desperation to avoid a return to the United States. “If I have to go back, I think I’ll kill myself,” Carrano said.

Speaking in a meeting room at the Poštorná detention center, the brothers started their story from the beginning. Their father is Czech Roma, born in Ostrava. He left the country in 1967, met their Polish mother in France, and the couple moved to the United States. There both brothers were born. Because the family was poor social services took them away. Despite attempts by the parents to regain custody of the two boys, they were placed in two different foster homes and lost contact. The brothers’ respective childhoods were difficult — both men shudder to remember the physical and sexual abuse they suffered in a series of foster homes.

Their separate lives mirrored each other’s. Both boys were adopted, earned high-school diplomas and were accepted to college. Both also had to drop out of school when they couldn’t pay tuition fees.

In the 1990s, Moore started a search for his biological parents, and learned that their name was Lakatos and they lived in New York. After calling every Lakatos in the phonebook, he found a distant cousin who told him his parents had returned to the Czech Republic.

In 2002, the brothers were reunited, and Carrano decided to locate their parents. He left for the Czech Republic and spent nine months with his family in Prostějov, central Moravia. While staying with them, he kept his passport current — as did many foreigners — by crossing the border every three months to get a fresh stamp.

“My parents begged me to stay,” Carrano said. “But I had to get my brother to come.” Because he couldn’t afford a flight to the United States, he went to local police and begged to be deported. At first they were reluctant, but in the end they locked him in the same internment camp that he is in now before putting him on a plane.

Carrano said he spent the next year back in the States, running a restaurant. He and Moore kept in touch with their new found family by phone. But the brothers’ luck took a nose dive, and they found themselves flipping burgers at a McDonald’s, which didn’t even pay their rent. They both ended up living on the streets and eating out of garbage cans.

Slowly, they managed to save some money, and their mother sent them the rest needed for new passports and tickets to Prague.

Last October, they returned to their parents in Prostějov. For the first time in 30 years, the whole family was united. The brothers met their siblings and spent Christmas at home.

In January, they realized their tourist visas would soon run out and wanted to leave and re-enter the country to get a fresh passport stamp. When they found out that the Czech Republic had entered the Schengen zone, they were ecstatic at first, thinking the border drop meant they could stay indefinitely.

However, they went to the local police to make sure and learned that the Schengen Agreement allows travelers without visas to spend three months out of every six within EU borders. At first, the brothers say, the local police wanted nothing do with them, and told the family not to show up again because they’d have to arrest them.

Wanting resolution, the brothers made an appointment with the foreigners’ police instead. On the day of the meeting, however, they say local police dragged them out of their beds at 7 a.m. and arrested them.

They spent 10 hours at a police station, where they say the officers made fun of them because they are American. They were told that unless they could prove they have a family in the Czech Republic they would be deported. But the brothers say no such papers exist, claiming even their birth certificates had been altered to list their adoptive parents. The police told them that the only way to avoid deportation was to ask for asylum, which both brothers did, thus ending up in the Poštorná detention center.

Carrano says their problems stem from racial prejudice. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We went to the police for help and instead they arrested us. I am convinced that it is because our parents are Gypsies,” he said. “But we were not brought up like that. I want to be a productive citizen.” Carrano said that he’d liked to open a small pizzeria in the Czech Republic, and had been offered a job as a cook at a Prostějov hotel but was arrested before he could start. He also reasserted, “I am not a criminal.”

Late last week, the brothers were advised that applying for asylum would only make their case look bad, so they are instead appealing the decision for deportation.

Outside opinion

In terms of punishment for the offense of overstaying the visa limit, Foreigners’ Police spokeswoman Kateřina Jirgesová clarified the point. “The law calls for barring entry for a period of zero to 10 years,” she told Právo. “That means that with minor offenses no action has to be taken. However, in the case of serious crime taking place or a repeated offense the punishment can be severe.”

For his part, the director of the detention center, Emil Pochylý, questions the necessity of the brothers’ confinement. “I usually deal with people that have no ID whatsoever,” he said. “These guys have their passports, they are causing no problems, and their case could have been dealt with differently.”

The U.S. Embassy in Prague did not comment by press time.

As for the two brothers, they are set on remaining in the country. “We have nothing to go back to in the States and everything to live for in the Czech Republic,” Carrano said. “It took us 30 years to be reunited with our family and now they want to separate us. Our father is very ill. If we are deported we might not see him again. We are not millionaires and cannot afford to jet back and forth all the time. They want to return us to a life on the street and eating garbage when we could live here with our family.”

The brothers’ appeal process could take several months, and the outcome remains uncertain.

In the meantime, Carrano and Moore sit in the detention facility, putting their trust in a higher power. “It was God who brought us all together. Without his help we couldn’t have found our family after 30 years over 4,000 miles away,” Carrano said. “We pray each night before going to sleep for this ordeal to end and to be reunited with our family.”

Ondřej Bouda can be reached at obouda@praguepost.com

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