Call for Adoption Agencies to Support Adoptees Being Deported UPDATED

Last week, we covered Kairi’s case here. ACT has once again stepped up to lead this important effort in demanding support for Kairi and others in her situation. See the open letter here and their video here.

As adoptive parents, we too call upon adoption agencies and organizations to step up and support Kairi. Do the right thing. If agencies can shell out $1Million for Christian music (see our executive salary post here ), then they can do this.

Hours ago, the Indian embassy in Washington asked for deportation details. Indian embassy asks for deportation details of Kairi Shepherd [Times Now 5/26/12].

“The Indian Embassy in Washington has sought details from the United States Government on the issue of the deportation of the Indian-American orphan Kairi Abha Shepherd, saying that her case deserves to be treated with utmost sensitivity and compassion.

“Her case deserves to be treated with the utmost sensitivity and compassion, keeping in mind the humanitarian dimension and tenets of universally accepted human rights,” Indian Embassy spokesman Virander Paul said in a statement.

“The Embassy has seen reports concerning Kairi Shepherd, and has requested the US authorities for facts on this matter,” the spokesman said referring to the media reports appearing in both India and the US.

Shepherd, 30, faces prospect of being deported to India from the United States, where she has lived after she was adopted by an Utah woman when she was just three months old.

“All the information available to us on this case indicates that it has a clearly humanitarian dimension, that cannot be ignored. “As reports indicate, Shepherd was brought to the United States after adoption, as a baby, and has known no other home,” Paul said, responding to media questions in this regard.

Three decades after she was adopted as three-months-old infant, Shepherd now faces the prospect of being deported to India, with a local court refusing to intervene in a federal government’s deportation move on the ground that she is a “criminal alien”.

Shepherd has termed deportation as a “death sentence” for her. As luck would have it, her mother died of cancer when she was eight.

When she was 17, she was arrested and convicted of felony check forgery to fuel a drug habit.”Shepherd was an orphan in India when she was brought to this country for adoption in 1982 by a US citizen. Her adoptive mother died when she was eight years of age, and she was thereafter cared for by guardians. There is no record of any effort by Shepherd or her guardians to petition for her citizenship,” court documents say.

“In March and May 2004, Shepherd was convicted in Utah of attempted forgery and third-degree forgery. After she served her time, the government initiated removal proceedings against her, alleging she was a criminal alien, based on the convictions,” it said.

At an initial hearing before the Immigration Judge (IJ), government counsel noted that Shepherd’s history suggested she might be able to prove she became a US citizen through adoption under the CCA’s automatic citizenship provision.

This provision directs that “a child born outside of the United States automatically becomes a citizen of the United States” when three conditions are fulfilled: (1) At least one parent of the child is a citizen of the United States; (2) The child is under the age of eighteen years; and (3) The child is residing in the United States in the legal and physical custody of the citizen parent pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence.
And citizenship constitutes the “denial of an essential jurisdictional fact” in a deportation proceeding.

Her deportation proceedings would be carried out by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after it receives the necessary travel documents from the Indian Government.

“Before carrying out a deportation, ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) must first obtain a travel document to ensure the receiving country will admit the alien who is being returned,” ICE spokesperson, Lori K Haley, said without commenting on the deportation case of Shepherd.

In her statement Kairi Shepherd did refer to that fact that a lot depends on the issuing of travel documents by the Ministry of External Affairs.

“I especially want to thank the kind souls in India who are working tirelessly on my behalf and, in particular, the men and women in the Ministry of External Affairs who reportedly may deny the issuance of travel documents, thus preventing my forced departure from America.

“Their hearts must be filled with compassion and I truly appreciate their efforts as these efforts, quite literally, may save my life,” Shepherd said in a statement.”

Update: Kairi gives a statement.

“The statement in full:

“My name is Kairi Shepherd and I am making this statement to say “Thank You” to all the wonderful people around the world who have taken my part and are attempting to block my deportation from the United States to India.

I especially want to thank the kind souls in India who are working tirelessly on my behalf and, in particular, the men and women in the Ministry of External Affairs who reportedly may deny the issuance of travel documents, thus preventing my forced departure from America. Their hearts must be filled with compassion and I truly appreciate their efforts as these efforts, quite literally, may save my life.

As many of you know by now, I was orphaned at birth in my birth country, India, and then, orphaned once again, when my adopting mother, after bringing me to America, died when I was very young. Since then, I have become ill with Multiple Sclerosis and have suffered from other debilitating diseases. The deportation order which may force me to part from my physicians, family, and friends here, could be a death sentence to me. But just when I felt most abandoned by the world and life, people from around the globe and all walks of life, have seen my plight and rallied to my defense. Again, I am so grateful.

There have been reports in the press that I am hiding from my government and the immigration enforcement authorities here. I wish to correct these reports. Yes. I am afraid of being deported. Who wouldn’t be in my condition? But I have never been in hiding or concealed my whereabouts. And I have no intention of absconding from the law. As evidence of this fact, I have paid publicly for the crimes which I have committed and which have resulted in the order of deportation. I have taken responsibility for my wrongs publicly, suffering the consequences. And I have directed my legal team (all of whom have volunteered pro bono to help me) to cooperate with the immigration enforcement authorities in order to process and resolve my status in a manner that is orderly and fair for all concerned.

I continue to pray that the spirit of human kindness, caring, and compassion, which has been shown to me thus far by all concerned and which we all have come to know and respect from the Ministry of External Affairs in India, will continue to shine forth in my situation. We are, after all, every one of us, pilgrims in this world. I feel this more deeply than ever before in my life. May God bless us all.”

ICE confirms Kairi Shepherd deportation, Indian Embassy plays humanitarian angle

[India America Today 5/25/12 by Tejinder Singh]

Update 2: Even Daily Mail is covering this story. “In 2007 I.C.E began removal proceedings against her. She spent the majority of the following year in I.C.E detention and was issued with a deportation order in February 2010.

Shepherd’s adopted siblings, friends and lawyers, who are working pro bono, are currently fighting to overturn her deportation order and gain her legal status.”

“Shepherd was adopted by Erlene Shepherd in 1983. Smith said that the woman, a widow from Utah, adopted three children from the U.S, three from Thailand and two from India.

She filed all the appropriate paperwork for her other children before she died of breast cancer in 1992, according to one of the siblings.

Shepherd’s attorney succinctly summarised his client’s plight saying, ‘She fell between the cracks.’ ”

 

Utah woman adopted from Indian orphanage THIRTY years ago now faces deportation

[Daily Mail 5/29/12]

“Now under threat of deportation, Kairi, who suffers from rapidly progressing multiple sclerosis, is an orphan without a country. She is from India, but was not raised as an Indian. She was raised as an American, but is not American. Deportation is a sanitized word. The proper term is exile, the banishment of a person from his home, his country. Given Kairi’s progressive illness, it might be death in exile.

I am an American doctor settled in Kolkata since 2006, where I founded Shishur Sevay, a home for orphan girls, some with disabilities, who were rejected for adoption. I have a younger daughter adopted in 1984 from IMH (International Mission of Hope), the same orphanage as Kairi. I also have an older daughter, to whom I gave birth. Both are American citizens, one by birth, the other by naturalization. When my older daughter was born she was mine and the only papers I filled out were for her
Gibi’s passport had the name Shepherd, because Erlene was to have adopted her birth certificate.

For my Indian daughter the process was longer and more complicated than pregnancy. I carried a different responsibility. I had been entrusted with another mother’s child, to love and raise her as if she were of my body. She had already lost a mother and a family. I felt a special responsibility to be the forever family she had been promised. Everyone in the long chain of people, institutions, and governments had a special responsibility for this child, because at that moment in time, they were the only ones in a position to secure her future safety.
Kairi didn’t hop on a plane at three months of age and say, “Mom, I’m coming home. Meet me at the airport.” Her “line of possession” was from a nursing home in Kolkata, to International Mission of Hope, to an escort, to Erlene Shepherd, her forever mother. An agency from the US side, AIAA (Americans for International Aid and Adoption), had to do a home study and approve Erlene to adopt another child.

Those papers had to be approved by the Indian Embassy in Washington and the US Immigration Service, all before Erlene could be assigned as Kairi’s mother. Back in India, IMH had to show how they received the child, and then petition the Alipore Court to give guardianship to Erlene Shepherd.
The guardianship papers defined the responsibilities of Erlene Shepherd: “Your petitioner submits that she is a fit and proper person to be appointed guardian of the person of the said minor during her minority. Your petitioner further submits that it will be for the welfare of and manifestly advantageous to the said minor as regards her up-bringing, education and establishment in life, if the petitioner is appointed guardian of the said minor and the minor is permitted to be taken to and live with your petitioner in USA.” The guardianship by the government of India did not require adoption or citizenship.
A different government office issued an Indian passport so Kairi could travel, with Erlene’s name as her US contact. The American Consulate had to issue a visa for Kairi to enter the US. Once Kairi was in the US, she would have received permanent resident status (a green card), which she then would have had to relinquish when she received her naturalization papers.
What went wrong – falling through the cracks
International adoption occurs in the context of a government agreement between the sending and receiving countries. At the time of Kairi’s adoption, neither government required that the child become a citizen. In fact they did not even require that the child be legally adopted!

All the people and government officials involved in the process of obtaining the child, caring for her, sending her to the US, and approving the US family were paid for what they did, by salaries or fees. Once Kairi was in the US, no one had a financial interest in helping her to get her papers. There may have been concern, but it was not imperative. [Emphasis Rally]

The agency that approved Erlene did so even though she had not obtained citizenship for her other international adoptees. Erlene was also approved to adopt Gibi after Kairi’s adoption. They had a single meeting, with Kairi present, and then the adoption didn’t happen; but Gibi had gone to Denver with Erlene’s name on her passport, just as Kairi had. Today in Kolkata, Gibi is tearful, and says, “Kairi was supposed to be my little sister. Maybe if I had been there to take care of her, her life would have been better.”
Erlene, a single mother with seven children, was struggling financially and then became ill with cancer. The child services agency in Utah which looks after orphaned children did not notice that the children lacked citizenship. The older siblings attempted to apply for Kairi’s papers when she was 16, but the US authorities did not let them, as they were not her parents.
By the time Kairi was an adult, her life had truly fallen apart. She was on drugs and was convicted of forgery for the purpose of getting drugs, but as a non-citizen, she was suddenly an “illegal alien headed for deportation.” She has been fighting this since 2007. The United States Child Citizenship Act of 2000 created a system of automatic citizenship for adopted children, but it was not retroactive to the time Kairi was born. She missed the deadline by months.
Hillary Clinton said, “It takes a village to raise a child.” First it takes a mother, and Kairi had lost two mothers by the time she was eight. Her mother didn’t obtain the citizenship papers, but the village also failed to notice. The same government that welcomed her at three months wants to send her back at age 30, because she committed a crime. Did any adoptive parent ever think that their children’s remaining in the US was anything other than unconditional, that if they broke the law, back they went? When we adopted, we were the ones on trial as to our worthiness of raising our children. For Kairi, who lost two mothers, the village absconded.
Kairi’s multiple sclerosis – the effects of exile
Kairi’s first symptoms of multiple sclerosis appeared when she was 18, and she was diagnosed at age 22. It has progressed rapidly. She has clear lesions of her brain, which are worse on each subsequent MRI. Without powerful and expensive medications, she will not be able to survive. With each crisis of her MS, she is hospitalized for infusions. Even worse, she cannot tolerate the heat. If Kairi is exiled, she will arrive in India without funds and without a destination. She could literally collapse assoon as she leaves the airport and end up in a hospital with no money and no way of communicating.
The US does not deport in a kindly way. A person is put on a plane with no possessions except travel documents and they are not even allowed to make a phone call. All the rights of Americans that are taken for granted are only for citizens. Kairi has no rights, not even to a phone call to say she is leaving. She was escorted to the US with fanfare, with people sending her off, with people waiting for her arrival. Yet there are no goodbyes, just a disappearance.
When I adopted from this orphanage, I sent ahead an outfit for my daughter to wear for her journey home. We all did that. Kairi went to the US in that special outfit her mother sent her. She will be returning in whatever she happens to be wearing at the time, with no one to meet her, to a country where she looks like she belongs, where people will expect her to respond as an Indian raised in India, but she will be alone, more alone than when her mother left her at the nursing home in Kolkata. Kairi left for America as a healthy infant. She will be returning as a very sick adult with an incurable disease and without any means of survival.
Where is the village now as she faces death in exile?
The US must face its responsibility to the orphaned children it accepted, which at the time was understood to be unconditionally. As an adoptive parent, I didn’t have a return policy. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 was a good attempt to fix the problem, but it didn’t go back far enough. Kairi isn’t the only adoptee facing deportation.
Another Indian adoptee, Jennifer Hynes, was sent back to India, leaving two children and a husband in the US. She is begging to be able to return to the US to be with her children.
The law has to be fixed. The process of exiling these sons and daughters of Americans must be stopped. They may be “adoptees,” but they came to the US to be our sons and daughters, as if of our bodies. That is what we owe them.”
Lack of accountability leaves Kairi in limbo

[India America Today 6/1/12 by Dr. Michelle Harrison]

Update 3: India’s Foreign  Minister SM Krishna asked Hillary Clinton to look into Kairi’s case. ““I put it across to Secretary Clinton that the United States will have to look at it from a humanitarian point of view.”

“Krishna voiced confidence that Clinton will “certainly look into it” but said he did not receive concrete promises.

“I think on an issue like this, specific assurances are not available but they have taken note of the government of India’s concern,” he said.”

India appeals to Clinton on deportation case

[The Express Tribune 6/14/12]

Update 4:

“The United States government on Tuesday told India America Today that Washington was in touch with Delhi, but the US State Department in the same vein refused to confirm if it had received the letters of communication from its Indian counterparts.

In a reply to a question posed by India America Today, the US State Department replied, “We are in touch with the Government of India regarding this case. For further information I refer you to DOJ and DHS.”

Replying to an email question, the Department of Homeland Security stated that they had no additional information they could share about Kairi Shepherd’s ordeal.

“We are not aware of any new developments regarding this case,” said Lori Haley, Spokeswoman, Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Earlier, one of the senior officials in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs had written in an email to Anjali Pawar, Director of Sakhee and Consultant to ACT (against child trafficking), “The Consulate General in San Francisco, under whose consular jurisdiction, the issue lies, has written to the Office of Foreign Missions of the Department of State in California, and the ICE of the Homeland Security Department.”

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in May confirmed to India America Today that Kairi Shepherd was “not in ICE custody at this time,” but clarified that “Shepherd has a final order of removal.” Virginia Kice, the Western Regional Communications Director/Spokesperson for ICE, replied to India America Today, “Before carrying out a deportation, ICE must first obtain a travel document to ensure the receiving country will admit the alien who is being returned. Once ICE obtains a travel document, the agency then proceeds to make transportation arrangements.”

“Completing the removal process can take varying amounts of time, depending on the country involved and the circumstances of the case,” said Kice.

On the same day, a spokesperson for the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC broke the silence saying, “The Embassy has seen reports concerning Kairi Shepherd, and has requested the US authorities for facts on this matter.”

Citing the humanitarian dimension of the case, “that cannot be ignored,” Virander Paul said in an email, “As reports indicate, Kairi Shepherd was brought to the United States after adoption, as a baby, and has known no other home.”

Without mentioning if the embassy had received a request from the US for travel documents for Shepherd, Paul said, “Her case deserves to be treated with the utmost sensitivity and compassion, keeping in mind the humanitarian dimension and tenets of universally accepted human rights.”

ICE gave India America Today a detailed account of the Shepherd case saying, “Shepherd was originally encountered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers at the Salt Lake County Adult Detention Complex in October 2007, following her incarceration on unknown local charges. ERO officers processed Ms. Shepherd and placed her in immigration removal proceedings after determining she was potentially deportable based upon her criminal history.”

“Chapter 2 of the “Liaison with Indian Diplomatic Missions,” instructs:

“The Central Adoption Resource Agency shall maintain liaison with Indian diplomatic missions abroad in order to safeguard the interests of children of Indian origin adopted by foreign parents against neglect, maltreatment, exploitation or abuse and to maintain an unobtrusive watch over the welfare and progress of such children.

For this purpose, the Central Adoption Resource Agency shall inform every Indian diplomatic missions concerned whenever an Indian child is taken in adoption or for the purpose of adoption, by foreign parents. The names, addresses and other particulars of such children and their adoptive/prospective adoptive parents shall be supplied to the Indian diplomatic missions as early as possible and in any case before the end of every quarter.”

The chapter states that “Periodical Progress reports of children from foreign adoptive parents as well as from recognized social or child welfare agencies in foreign countries” should be obtained, “to examine such reports and to take such follow-up action as deemed necessary.”

It is unknown whether Periodical Progress reports were obtained in Kairi Shepherd’s case or if CARA followed up after the death of her adoptive mother.

Chapter 6, under “Rights of the Child Taken Abroad,” explicitly notes, “On adoption of the child by the foreign parent according to the law of his/her country, it is presumed that subject to the laws of the land the child would acquire the same status as a natural born child within wedlock with the same rights of inheritance and succession and the same nationality as the foreign parent adopting the child.”

Guidelines penned by a task force of members from voluntary placement agencies under the chairmanship of Justice P.N. Bhagwati (the former Chief Justice of India) declared: “Even after the adoption is legalized, the enlisted foreign agency should maintain contact with the adoptive family in keeping with the need of privacy of the adoptive family and provide support and counseling services, if necessary and safeguard the interest of the child till such time as he/she attains majority.”

It appears the repeatedly orphaned Shepherd was denied her specific “rights of the child taken abroad” from India and that there were widespread failures among the checks and balances designed to protect vulnerable minor children from India who have been adopted abroad.

“She doesn’t have any known family in India, has no contacts, has lost the ability to speak any Indian language and might just die due to her serious health ailment of multiple sclerosis, after being thrown on Indian roads,” declared Pawar, questioning, “Why after her adoption in the US, her citizenship status has not been adjusted?”

“As long children from India adopted by US parents are faced with the threat of deportation, adoptions from India to the US should be halted altogether,” demanded Pawar in her letter to Indian Foreign Minister Krishna. ”

Governments Communicate in Kairi Case But Won’t Reveal Details

[India America Today 6/13/12]

Update 5: India America Today says they have received notice from the Undersecretary of State’s assurance that justice will be done in Kairi’s case

Hope for Kairi Hillary Assures Justice

[ACT 6/14/12]

Update 6: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs summarizes the issues of adult adoptee deportation at Deporting Adult Adoptees[Nation of Change 7/5/12 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs]. One statistic of interest: “Alongside media reports of pending removals, post-adoption service organizations in sending countries like South Korea provide a snapshot of the direst cases. Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link in Seoul, South Koreareports 10 Korean deported adoptees visiting its office for help since 2000. KoRoot, an NGO and guesthouse in Seoul, has brought public attention to three deported Korean adoptees in the past year. One of these adoptees, Tim Yee, was discovered homeless in Itaewon and in need of medical attention.”

About Kairi: ”

“It is incomprehensible to me how the United States can deport her,” says Arun Dohle of Against Child Trafficking based in Brussels, “Just recently, a U.S. adoptive mother [Torry Hansen] was heavily fined for sending her child back to Russia and here the United States is doing something similar by deporting Kairi.”

According to Tobias Hubinette, a researcher at the Multicultural Institute in Botkyrka, Sweden and an expert on Korean adoption, “In Scandinavia, foreign-born adoptees have received citizenship automatically ever since the 1990s although before that, adoptive parents had to apply for citizenship for their adopted children, but even if some might have forgotten or neglected to do that, any deportation of any adoptee has never to my knowledge happened.”

As a signatory to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption since 2008, the United States is obligated to extend all of its rights and privileges to its adopted children (Article 26) and to ensure that they reside permanently in the U.S. — the receiving state (Article 18). Yet the U.S. government has been largely silent about how it intends to fulfill its responsibilities regardless of its adopted children’s birth dates. By comparison, news media from sending countries have voiced their dismay about adult adoptee removals and have called on the United States as the world’s largest adopter of children to take the lead on the humanitarian treatment of them'”

About Joao Herbert: “Four years after deportation, Joao Herbert’s body was found in the slums of Campinas, north of Sao Paulo, where he had been scraping by as an English instructor. At his funeral in his hometown of Wadsworth, Ohio, his grieving parents, Nancy Saunders and Jim Herbert, remembered their son’s love of soccer and ached for the truth about why their son was murdered.

Joao was survived by a young daughter who was born in the U.S. Under UNICEF’s definition, she became an orphan like her father once was before her grandparents adopted him from Brazil. Yet the conditions of her father’s death and her consequent orphaning could have been averted if Congress had not compromised on a special provision to the CCA granting adult adoptees citizenship.

While Joao’s family struggled to remain together pending his removal, former Congressman William Delahunt, the provision’s sponsor, spoke of Joao’s case before the House of Representatives to emphasize the urgent need for Congress to naturalize all adoptees. “’No one condones criminal acts, Mr. Speaker,” Delahuntsaid, “But the terrible price these young people and their families have paid is out of proportion to their misdeeds. Whatever they did, they should be treated like any other American kid. They are our children, and we are responsible for them.”

Yet conceding to anti-immigrant sentiment, members of the House stripped out inclusion of adult adoptees in order to push the bill forward, and in so doing, they compromised adult adoptee lives.

“To subject adopted children to deportation, is a gross betrayal of orphaned, abandoned, relinquished children,” says Anjali Pawar, director of Sakhi. “We are aware of cases [similar to Kairi], and as long as children from India adopted by U.S. parents are faced with the threat of deportation, then adoptions from India to the United States, should be halted altogether.””