After COVID-19 drove them to leave the U.S, Indiana family encounters legal trouble

When Jason and Jennifer Grogg and their four kids moved from Logansport to the Caribbean island of Dominica in 2021, they expected to make a new life spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ while living free of the frustrations they felt about COVID-19 mandates.

What they found instead was trouble.

First, the family couldn’t find permanent housing. Then came a run-in with Dominican authorities who last spring searched their rental home and a shipping container the family used to move their belonging to the island. Those searches led to a gun, ammunition and accessories they could not legally possess on the island.

The fallout, which comes on the heels of a missionary group severing ties with the family, could land Jason Grogg, the family's patriarch, in a foreign prison or deported to the United States. For now, Jason says his family is stuck.

The Dominica government — not to be confused with the Dominican Republic — has seized Jason Grogg’s passport, and his wife and children, who have their passports, can't afford to leave as cost related to the legal cases diminish the family's savings. Meanwhile, Jason can't legally work because he doesn’t have a work permit.

Still, Jason remains committed to the move and determined to fight the accusations against him. "We left the United States for a very particular reason when it came to the COVID nonsense," he said. "But we also saw very clearly this is the path that God was wanting us to take for purposes unknown."

Travel: Dominica: Where champagne and warm mud mix

A frustrating ordeal

The family's latest challenge came in mid-April when the Anti-Crime Task Force of the Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force and customs investigators searched the Groggs’ rental home and a 40-foot shipping container the family had stored at local church they were helping.

Law enforcement seized the firearm and various ammunition, initially charging the family with possessing a handgun without a license, arms trafficking and evasion of custom duties.

The family was taken into custody. The couple and their two oldest children, Hannah and Gracia, 18 and 16 at that time, respectively, were arrested and jailed. Their younger children, Eliyah and Nathan, 14 and 12 at the time, respectively, were taken into custody by the Commonwealth and sent to a home for abused and neglected children.

All of the items were accidentally brought into the country via the shipping container, Jason said, adding they were packed in moving totes and shipped to the island. “None of it was supposed to have come down,” he said.

The months-long legal drama has upended the Groggs’ new life in Dominica and turned what should have been a fresh start into a frustrating ordeal.

Dominca's government has brought two court cases against Jason since his family has been on the island. The first case — for possession — was settled when Jason pleaded guilty to possessing the firearm and paid a fine of $25,000 East Caribbean dollars, or about $9,250 in U.S. currency.

The commonwealth dropped all charges against Jason's wife and eldest children after his guilty plea. The younger children have since been reunited with the family. The second case involving customs is active and open.

"My wife and my children, they all have their passports to leave the country if they needed to like in an emergency," he said. "Because the government has been taking so long and absorbing so much of my funds, we have no way of at this point, unless we had family pay for tickets, there's no way for us to leave right now."

Leaving it all behind

Before moving to Dominica, the Groggs owned their own house, grew their own vegetables, and always had home renovation projects in the works. Jennifer Grogg homeschooled the kids. Jason was a member of the National Rifle Association and an firearms instructor.

As self-proclaimed devout Christians, they saw the expansion of LGBTQ rights as a sign that the United States had turned away from God, according a series of newsletters about their lives the couple produced for friends and family. So, when a once-in-a-life time pandemic turned the world upside down, and local governments issued restrictions to curtail spread of the disease, the couple began toying with the idea of leaving the U.S.

"We were feeling like God was leading us out of the country to go somewhere else," Jason Grogg said in a telephone interview with IndyStar. "He led us to the Commonwealth of Dominica."

An associate in Florida suggested to Jason Grogg the commonwealth as a potential option for the Groggs to relocate.

Known as The Nature Island, Dominica is home to about 70,000 people. The island, covering roughly 290 square miles, is situated between Martinique and Guadeloupe in the eastern Caribbean Sea’s Lesser Antilles archipelago. The tropical island is home to rugged mountains, hot springs, volcanos, lush vegetation and waterfalls.

"It's a beautiful place," Grogg said, noting that the family also liked the commonwealth's strong constitution. "The people are absolutely wonderful."

The Groggs began researching the island after receiving the suggesting and that research led them to a faith-based nonprofit called Feed My Sheep, which supports youth in crisis. They connected with the nonprofit's Christian leadership while they were still in Logansport and collected Bibles they could hand out once in Dominica.

The family spent several months preparing for the move. They readied their house to sell and packed up items they were taking with them in Sterlite totes. They sold things they would no longer need or couldn't bring with them ― including Jason Grogg's collection of firearms. They arranged for a shipping container to be delivered near their Logansport home and filled it with their belongings to be shipped to Dominica.

Then, one day in the summer of 2021, they loaded up their kids and suitcases, headed to Indianapolis International Airport and took off on a flight to their new Caribbean home.

A different life

Once on the tropical island, life was different from what they experienced in Indiana. The Groggs arrived weeks ahead of their shipping container, which they temporarily stored at Feed My Sheep's campus. There were fewer COVID restrictions. They bounced from rental house to rental house. And in newsletters, they consistently asked friends and family to pray that they would find a reliable vehicle and that hurricanes would avoid the island.

“We had read that Dominica was very God-centered. They have a national prayer that talks about Jesus and their national anthem gives praise to God," Jennifer Grogg wrote in the family's December 2021 newsletter. "The schools start each day with prayer as does each session of the government. The vehicles have religious phrases and wording on them and the people all nod their heads in agreement when we start talking about 'God things.'"

Still, they also initially struggled to find a church that fulfilled their spiritual needs.

There were good moments, too.

They made friends. Jason found work doing short-term renovation and construction jobs. He started a carpentry class. The family explored their new tropical environment using vehicles loaned by kind neighbors and friends. And, their friends at Feed My Sheep, where they often volunteered, helped them find a new rental home in the island's Belfast community. The organization would later disassociate itself from Jason Grogg. Feed My Sheep did not respond to request for comment.

Life was OK — that is until earlier this year when the police showed up after a dispute with a landlord that Feed My Sheep had connected the family with.

Arrested and arrested again

Law enforcement told local media they found a Glock 9 mm pistol, 9 mm and 20 mm ammunition, four M16 magazines with 30 rounds of ammunition, and 17 20-gage shell. Jason Grogg disputes their descriptions of the items found.

“They had found some miscellaneous ammunition," he said in a telephone interview. According to Jason's account, the handgun was initially found in a tote in an unsecured room inside of the Feed My Sheep building. The nonprofit had permitted him to use the space to sort things out from his shipping container. Jason took the gun home to secure it and intended to navigate Feed My Sheep's connections to secure a permit to legally possess it.

Before he could do that, though, the family was arrested on ammunition and gun charges because Jason did not have a license to legally possess firearms and ammo in Dominica, according to the Groggs and local news reports. The family’s local attorney, Jilane-Milani Prevost, did not respond to interview requests before IndyStar's deadline.

“My wife and my two daughters were essentially in a cell that was 4 feet by less than 10 feet for seven days. It was just it was incredibly inhumane,” Jason Grogg said. He is accusing the government of trying to extort him as a foreign national. Dominica’s Public Prosecutions Office did not respond to request for comment.

“They said if you plead guilty to this ammunition and gun charges then then we will let your wife and your kids go so it was it was a matter of I had to do that— I had to plead guilty to those charges,” Grogg said. And, he did after spending seven days in jail. He also paid the fine.

Jason said he can appeal later. A judge at the East Caribbean Supreme Court ruled the government of Dominica illegally held the three underage younger children.

The U.S. State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington D.C. would not confirm whether it sent a representative to Domenica to look into the Grogg family arrest and the children's detention.

“We are aware of reports of the arrest of U.S. citizens in Dominica. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment at this time,” a spokesperson said via email. The federal agency assumes a limited role in these interactions, noting on its website that when a U.S. citizen is arrested abroad it does not always provide legal representation or get them out of jail.

Jason had been out of jail for several days when he was rearrested. Authorities detained him at the airport, where he says he was attempting to travel to the U.S. Consulate in Barbados. He was jailed for roughly another seven days on customs charges alleging the family evaded paying duties on items they brought to the country. The next court date is in February.

“They’re just kicking it months and months down the road and it makes it exponentially more expensive for me,” he said.

The legal troubles have turned the Groggs' life upside down. Jason Grogg said he feels he's being lumped in with murderers and other criminals for what he claims is an innocent mistake.

"The government of Dominica has my passport. And I have to go, I have to walk down to the nearest town, sign the bail book three times a week — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday when there's people signing the books who are out on bail for murder," he said. "They're signing it like maybe once every other week. It's clearly disproportionate."

Contact IndyStar investigative reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @allyburris.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana family moves to small Caribbean island, arrested on gun charges