Tuesday, August 28, 2007

This was the scene recently at a children's home in Antigua, Guatemala, before police removed 46 babies, suspecting they had been kidnapped or coerced from their parents to be put up for foreign adoption.

A child protection consultant for UNICEF Guatemala says Guatemala is the world's second-leading source of adopted children -- behind only China -- because its process takes only six to eight months; babies are usually just 8 months old when they leave the country with their adoptive parents.

The U.S. State Department cautions people seeking Guatemalan adoptions that "Guatemala does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of [human] trafficking." Earlier this month, the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala began requiring two DNA tests to confirm the identity of an adopted child before issuing an immigrant visa.

According to the State Department, the embassy issued 4,135 visas for Guatemalan orphans in fiscal 2006. The department's Web site also warns about reported extortion attempts by Guatemalan police "threatening to take the biological or foster mother and the prospective or adopted child into custody."

-- Kathleen Hom