Ricardo Chavira Chicano

My reporting years in San Diego were among my best. Here’s an excerpt from my book that helped make San Diego so memorable.

In April 1982, I came across a story I found incredible. Journalism would expose me to events stranger than fiction. This story was about the illegal adoption of Mexican babies. It seemed the stuff of urban legend, and it first caught my attention with the 1978 publication of The New York Times story about a legal dispute concerning an adoption in San Diego of an illegally trafficked Mexican baby. One of the lawyers involved tipped me off to the more significant problem of black-market adoptions. He put me in contact with San Diego’s district attorney, whose office was investigating the criminal activity. It was a substantial case of human trafficking involving the buying and selling of Mexican infants.

I was provided with the names and contact information of six Mexican women who had given away their newborn children. All six women I contacted agreed to interviews. They were young, poor and unmarried. Most had responded to Tijuana newspaper ads that said an American couple wanted to adopt a baby. Those who responded to the ads believed they were too poor to care for their newborns.

Some also lived far from their families, who might have provided support. Still, others did not want relatives to know they had become pregnant out of wedlock. None of the women thought they were selling their babies but rather relieving themselves of an unbearable burden. Abortions were illegal, dangerous, and expensive in Mexico.

When expectant mothers called the number in the ads, a woman answered in Spanish. She told them that she represented the adoptive parents. She would ask personal questions about the women’s age, occupation, and address. If all seemed in order, the women would meet with the purported representative in Tijuana or other Baja California locations. The baby broker would size up the mothers-to-be, looking for indications that the women were in poor health or prostitutes and appeared sincere about going through with the transaction.

In exchange for agreeing to give up their babies for adoption, the women were told that prenatal care and delivery costs would be covered. The representatives, always young women, said the mothers would also receive a few hundred dollars as compensation. Shortly after the babies were born, the representatives, Mexican women who were US citizens, would pay the mothers and take the infants to San Marcos, a city in northern San Diego County.

At that time, Americans who crossed into cities on the Mexican border were not required to show a passport when re-entering the United States. Border agents simply talked to those who presented themselves at ports of entry and determined whether the persons were American or legal residents. Thus, the women couriers would explain to the agents that they were citizens, as were the infants. They were waved through.

According to the district attorney, San Marcos resident, and tax preparer, Dora Díaz Green was the head of the illegal operation. A few times, Díaz and an alleged associate, Heather Springer, smuggled expectant mothers from Tijuana into San Diego.