Category: transnational adoption
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Born Abroad and Fearful of ICE, Adoptees Try to Prove They Belong
Up to 200,000 people adopted as children from abroad are vulnerable to deportation by an administration searching for problems with their citizenship. By Elizabeth Williamson Link to story Tiko’ Rujux-Xicay worries about increased immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minnesota as residents report people being questioned and detained regardless of their citizenship status.Credit…Jamie Kelter…
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Haitian adoptee with disabilities returns to U.S., seeks ‘freedom’ after years of ordeal
Adopted by an American family as a child, Joie Laughlin endured years of abuse in the U.S. and at a Jamaican boarding school, which left her stranded in Haiti for three months— now back in the U.S., she hopes to reunite with her older sister and rebuild her life Link to story. By Onz Chéry
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Swedish Adoptee Discovers She Was Kidnapped From Colombia at 1 Year Old
By Emma Tiger Link to story Paula Dahlberg from Vittaryd, Sweden, was born in Colombia and adopted as a child by a couple in Härnösand, where she grew up. In the adoption papers, she was given a new name: Paola Andrea became Paula, with Andrea as a middle name. As a teenager, she began to…
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Shaken by their pasts, inter-country adoptees demand federal government broaden inquiry scope
By James oaten Link to story 14 March 2026 at 8:57pm Adoptee Kimbra Butterworth was well into adulthood when she confirmed she was a victim of an infamous Taiwanese baby smuggler. If it weren’t for dogged family and media investigations plus a bit of luck, she may have never found out. “I may never find…
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Korean-born Australian woman overturns adoption as federal inquiry launched
By Alex Turner-Cohen, James Oaten and Giselle Wakatama Link to story A Korean-born Australian says she struggled to remove her adoptive parents from her birth certificate. (ABC News: Maren Preuss) A Korean-born Australian is calling for changes to adoption laws after enduring an onerous process to nullify her “cruel” adoption, which included years of sexual and physical abuse. Last…
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Washington Times: South Korea relaunches truth commission with focus on adoption fraud
By Kim Tong-hyung – Associated Press Link to story. SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has relaunched a fact-finding commission into its past human rights violations, with a key focus on the extensive fraud and malfeasance that corrupted the nation’s historic foreign adoption program. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the third in the country’s history, began accepting…
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The New York Review: Torn Asunder
By Oscar Lopez Link to story (paywalled) As Guatemala and El Salvador were being torn apart by violent US-backed regimes, tens of thousands of children—many of them war orphans, others forcibly taken from their birth parents—were being adopted overseas.
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American Community Media: More than 17k Korean Adoptees in US Lack Citizenship. Many Live in Minnesota.
By Nicole Chang February 26, 2026 Link to story
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Impact International: From Orphans to Victims: How State Policies Fueled 72 Years of South Korea Adoption Abuses
Link to story Credit: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File South Korea’s international adoption program, spanning 72 years from the post-Korean War era, has been exposed as a profound failure of state policy that prioritized cost-cutting over human rights. Once portrayed as a compassionate solution for war orphans, it systematically falsified documents and exported children to the US, Europe, and…
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NPR: A U.S. veteran adopted an orphan from Iran. Decades later, ICE is trying to deport her
By Juliana Kim Link to full story
Transnational /Transcultural Adoption Project 