Guatemala imposes crackdown on adoptions

ANTIGUA, Guatemala - Ann Roth mortgaged her Chicago home to adopt two 9-month-olds from Guatemala. Now the future of her babies is caught up in an international crackdown on a country that sent more than 4,000 babies to U.S. homes last year.

Roth's children are being watched by police carrying assault rifles after their raid on the Casa Quivira adoption home in this colonial tourist hub. Guatemalan officials say the home's paperwork did not meet legal standards. But parents and the home's directors say the raid was politically motivated after U.S. pressure to clean up a largely unregulated, multimillion-dollar industry in which some brokers steal babies.

Since the raid Saturday, parents from the United States have flooded the U.S. Embassy with desperate calls.

At the same time, Guatemalan parents such as Carlos Rivas are looking for their kidnapped children at Casa Quivira. But none of the seized babies matched the picture Rivas carried of his daughter Esther Sulamita, who was stolen from his shoe store in Guatemala City in March when she was 6 months old. "We thought that with so many children here, there's a good chance we would find her," said Rivas.

The raid on Casa Quivira is the biggest in a string of recent raids on adoption homes. The owners of Casa Quivira, Clifford Phillips and his wife, Sandra Gonzalez, a Guatemalan lawyer, say all the babies have been properly surrendered for adoption since the home opened in 1996.

The United States has pushed for a crackdown on an industry that has placed more than 25,000 Guatemalan children in U.S. homes since 1990 - so many that every 100th baby born in Guatemala grows up as an adopted American. The adoption process has slowed since the State Department warned in March about conflicting laws, scam artists pressuring women to sell their babies, and extortionists targeting adoptive parents.

But outside experts familiar with Casa Quivira say it has a spotless record. "The care and facilities at Casa Quivira are some of best we've seen in the world," said Shannon Mogilinski, spokeswoman for Embrace the Children, a St. Charles, Ill., nonprofit organization that works to protect destitute children in several countries.

Casa Quivira appears to have fallen afoul of a previously unenforced 2003 law that requires caretakers of children in pending adoptions to obtain court-determined legal custody, not just papers signed by notaries.

Guatemala's attorney general says his office is preparing for tougher rules that go into effect on Jan. 1, when the country implements the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions. The new rules require a government agency to oversee every case.

"What we've done does not mean parents will not be able to adopt. It will just take more time because the birth mothers will need to appear for DNA tests . . . and be asked again if they want to give their children up," Attorney General Mario Gordillo said.

The U.S. Embassy last week began requiring a second DNA test proving the adopted child in a visa request matches the child in the initial paperwork.