Couple Adopting Child Aided Authorities : Suspected Baby Smugglers Arrested at Airport

A sophisticated baby-smuggling ring that sold newborn children from a home for unwed mothers in Tijuana to couples in the United States collapsed Wednesday with the arrest of two San Ysidro women during a baby transfer at Lindbergh Field, federal officials said.

The international operation aped the methods of legitimate adoption agencies to sell at least seven babies--and perhaps many dozens more--for $5,000 and up over the past two years, immigration officials announced in San Diego.

“We got the best-looking birth certificate you’ve ever seen: fingerprints of the baby, signed, sealed, notarized,” said Philip Phillips, who revealed that he helped officials break the ring after learning that his new daughter’s adoption papers were fraudulent.

Phillips, a Kalama, Wash., resident, spoke at the press conference. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) got its first inkling of the operation in 1983 when a woman bringing a Mexican newborn across the border at San Ysidro could not prove that she was its mother, officials said, and she admitted she was working for people in Tijuana.

That information led eventually to a former San Diego resident running a publishing company in Dover, Ark. INS agents arrested him in July on suspicion of supplying fake birth certificates and adoption papers to couples buying babies through the alleged ring.

The man, William Albert Bissell, kept meticulous records, INS agents said. Copies of correspondence between Bissell and the couples led INS officials to seven American families with smuggled Mexican babies, including Philip and Linda Phillips.

An agent said Bissell formerly operated Gemini Publications in Chula Vista.

On Wednesday, INS officials said they arrested Juanita Leyva-Vargas, 52, and her daughter, Melinda, 25, in a terminal at Lindbergh Field as they handed the Phillipses their second smuggled baby. The baby had been born Friday in the Tijuana home.

The two women, who the INS said share an apartment in San Ysidro, were being held on suspicion of conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens, a felony offense punishable by five years in prison and a $2,000 fine.

INS officials said they intend to get arrest warrants for two Mexicans living in Tijuana and suspected of being principals in the ring in case they try to enter the United States. One investigator said there may be other participants in the United States and Mexico.

Clifton J. Rogers, deputy district director of the INS in San Diego, said the ring had a tried-and-true modus operandi.

American couples known to be interested in adopting would be contacted and told to get together the price of the baby, fly quickly to San Diego and check into one of several San Ysidro motels, Rogers said.

There, they would meet Leyva-Vargas and her daughter and make a down payment, Rogers said. They would be taken to the Tijuana home, where they would be encouraged to spend a half-day with the baby--a practice officials said is common in legitimate agencies.

They would then meet a woman identified as the baby’s mother, who would sign forms agreeing to give up the child, Rogers and the Phillipses said. They would be referred to a lawyer who would help process the paper work.

Back in the San Ysidro motel, the couple would make the final payment and receive the baby, who would have been brought across the border by Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, since the American couples would have aroused suspicion, Rogers said.

Back in Kalama, Philip Phillips said, “We were sitting there--for lack of a better term--fat, dumb and happy with the baby and all the paper work.” When an agent told him the paper work was fake, Phillips said he offered to help the INS.

The seven smuggled babies have been traced to Kalama; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Springfield, Ill.; Milwaukee, and New York City, Rogers said. The investigation is continuing.

Meanwhile, the INS is helping the Phillipses try legally to adopt their two babies, said Harold Ezell, INS western regional commissioner. He said the agency would not press conspiracy charges against the Phillipses because he said he believed they never knew the adoptions were illegal.

Whether the INS will prosecute the other new parents will be decided case by case, he said.

Linda Phillips, 42, said the baby picked up Wednesday is the couple’s ninth adoptive child, and the second from Mexico. “We love children,” she said, explaining her reasons for accepting the terms of the adoption. “We would have gone anywhere to get a child.”

“The supply of healthy infants is very, very low in the United States,” added her husband, who is 45.

INS officials would say little about the home in Tijuana. Mrs. Phillips said she was led to believe the women received money, perhaps $1,500, for their babies.