Bryan Hagerich, a Pennsylvania dad of two, has been home for nearly two weeks after he was arrested and detained for more than 100 days in Turks and Caicos for having stray ammunition in his luggage at an airport on the islands.
Hagerich, like four other Americans arrested over the same thing since February, did not know the ammo was in his suitcase when he prepared to fly back home after a vacation with his family, but he had to argue his way out of a minimum 12-year sentence for the crime regardless.
A judge eventually ordered the 39-year-old former baseball pro to pay a $6,500 fine and allowed him to return home.
Now, Hagerich is speaking up about a lack of support from the State Department and what he described as “anti-American sentiment” among TCI government officials — though he says locals went out of their way to be kind and helpful.
“I wasn’t contacted by the State Department once I was detained for over two months, I think it was over 70 days. Once I was initially contacted, it was after the story had gathered national media attention,” Hagerich told Fox News Digital. “…An individual [with the State Department] that came to the island more or less kind of felt like a check-the-box-type exercise. It was pretty clear in their mind that we committed a crime. We should essentially go to jail for that.”
Hagerich also recalled a U.S. State Department official joking, “Why don’t you guys just hop on a boat? If you show up on the U.S. soil, they have to let you back in.”
Hagerich said the Department’s handling of his situation “begs the question”: “Which side of the table are they on? Are they on the U.S. side or are they on the Turks side?”
“They didn’t have, really, anything to offer,” he said.
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the Department, as well as U.S. embassies and consulates abroad, have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.
Whenever a U.S. citizen is detained in a foreign country, the State Department seeks immediate access to visit the individual, the spokesperson added.
When a U.S. citizen is arrested overseas, the State Department stands ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance, the spokesperson said, noting that U.S. citizens are generally subject to a foreign country’s laws when they travel there, even if those laws differ from those in the United States.
Due to privacy considerations, the Department did not provide further comment on the Americans recently arrested in Turks and Caicos.
Hagerich also took issue with what he described as “anti-American sentiment” from TCI officials overseeing his case.
Prosecutors compared him to an American murderer and Brittney Griner, he said.
“Quite honestly, they’re doing a better job of capturing, you American fathers, American mothers, grandmothers, than they are their own people [committing crimes],” Hagerich said. “Looking back and reflecting upon … the homegrown violence that they have on the island, they need to look at a different approach to solve this. I can honestly share that 95% of the everyday, working people on the island were extremely supportive of us.”
Since February, five other Americans have been arrested in Turks and Caicos for having bullets in their luggage.
Two, including Ryan Watson of Oklahoma and Sharitta Grier of Florida, still face their sentencings.
A local officer told Hagerich at the police station when he was checking in one day, “I can’t believe you’re still here. This has to be a money grab. This has to be political,” Hagerich recalled.
“We went on a vacation. Our biggest concern was making sure the kids had their swimsuits, their puddle jumper, sunscreen,” Hagerich said. “It wasn’t looking for travel alerts. I didn’t believe we were going to an area in place that we would feel unsafe.”
Michael Wenrich, a Virginia father, was also arrested for having ammo in his luggage — in his case, just two stray bullets that fell into the lining of his bag.
He was released last week and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine.
“There’s still so much crime on that island that it’s pretty obvious it’s not deterring people,” Wenrich said. “So it would benefit, I think, the tourists and the islanders there if they could reevaluate how those laws are written for instances where people aren’t intending to do any criminal acts.”
Wenrich, unlike Hagerich, said he was immediately connected with the State Department once he was detained because his father had reached out on his behalf.
“As the process went along, they kept in contact. I did feel like we kind of had to push for their help a lot more,” he said of the Department. “I was fortunate to have one of the representatives at my sentencing arguments hearing, which was nice, just so they could see how the process goes and hear the arguments and kind of understand how discombobulated that courtroom can be. I don’t know what they did behind the scenes.”
Both Hagerich and Wenrich thanked state and federal lawmakers, as well as their friends and family, for their assistance in helping them get back home.
