Ricardo Chavira Chicano

As I wrote in a previous post, I learned that Mexican newborns were being sold to American adoptive parents. I was a reporter for the San Diego Union in the early 1980s and heard what I dismissed as urban legend. Who would engage in such disturbing human trafficking? I would learn that many were involved. Here is an excerpt from my book describing one case.

According to the San Diego 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.

One of the women who surrendered their babies was an undocumented immigrant, twenty-year-old Patricia Alvarez of Carlsbad in northern San Diego County. She told me her father, Silvino, approached Díaz, who had helped him with a separate immigration matter.

He reportedly sought advice from Díaz because he and his daughter did not have enough money to cover prenatal and birth expenses. According to Alvarez, Díaz offered to take custody of the infant in ex- change for her covering those expenses. Alvarez and her father agreed, and after giving birth to her daughter, Adriana, Díaz took the baby. A few months later, Alvarez said she regretted her decision and sought Adriana’s return. Also, Silvino was angry because Díaz had failed to cover Adriana’s medical costs.

Finally, Díaz took Alvarez to the Vista home of Thomas and Juanita McMillan. Díaz showed Alvarez an infant girl there and told her she was Adriana.

“I could tell it was not Adriana, and I never told Mrs. Díaz to give Adriana away,” Alvarez said. “She was supposed to keep her.”

Díaz insisted it was Adriana and that it was too late to take her away from the McMillans because they and the baby had bonded.

Alvarez went to local authorities, who executed a search warrant for the child at the McMillian home. An infant was recovered, but, as Alvarez had said, it was not Adriana.

The baby’s mother was Norma Alicia Montes of Tijuana. According to Montes, she had replied to a Tijuana newspaper ad, and Díaz and Springer had come to see her. Montes gave birth to Iliana in Tijuana on March 1, 1980. Twenty days later, the women came to pick up the baby. Montes, a Mexico City native, said, “I was breastfeeding the baby and wanted to feed her that afternoon. They came that night, took her, and told me they would take care of the adoption paperwork.”

Montes said she was relinquishing her baby out of economic necessity but refused several times to accept money from the women. Reluctantly, she received forty dollars.

The McMillans refused to disclose many details of what happened next. Still, on March 3, “a third party” (neither Díaz nor Springer) delivered Iliana to their home. The couple, married for thirty-two years then, had one child, a 20- year-old daughter.

Mrs. McMillan, tall with salt and pepper hair, recalled they had visited a Tijuana orphanage. She said, “This little boy, about five years old, came up to me and hugged my leg. He wouldn’t let go. I was shocked that he couldn’t talk. The people there told me they kept contact with the children to a minimum so it wouldn’t be hard on children when they had to leave.”

When baby Iliana was delivered to the McMillan home, Juanita said she didn’t have the heart to turn away the child. “I understood this child had no one to care for her.” Soon, she began to worry that she had no documents giving her custody, so she gave Díaz $400 to set matters right.

It turned out that Adriana, Alvarez’s daughter, was in the care of Díaz’s daughter. She returned the baby to Alvarez. Surprisingly, no one was charged. The DA’s office concluded the only crime they could prosecute was the operation of an unlicensed adoption agency, a misdemeanor. They chose not to prosecute.

Federal immigration authorities acknowledged that the law was violated when the babies were smuggled into the country. However, they noted that prosecution would involve the deportation of the infants.

As I learned, it was typical in such cases that the well-being of the children mattered most. Deporting small children to Mexico meant they would be taken from a loving home and placed in a Mexican orphanage.