2 Arrests End Baby-Smuggling Ring, U.S. Officials Say

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

The international operation aped the methods of legitimate adoption agencies in order to sell at least seven babies--perhaps dozens more--for $5,000 and more during the last two years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said at a news conference Wednesday.

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

“There’s no feeling like the feeling you have when you find all those papers--stacks of them--are forged,” Phillips of Kalama, Wash., told a press conference here. “They’re works of art.”

The INS got its first inkling of the operation in 1983, when a woman bringing a Mexican infant across the border at San Ysidro could not prove that she was the child’s mother, officials said. She admitted that she was hired by people in Tijuana to transport the baby.

Publisher Arrested

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

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. Bissell is being held in the Springfield Federal Penitentiary in Missouri after his indictment in Little Rock, Ark., on a charge of producing counterfeit documents.

On Wednesday, INS officials arrested Juanita Vargas Espinosa, 52, and her daughter, Melinda, 28, in an airline terminal at Lindbergh Field in San Diego as they handed the Phillipses their second smuggled baby, which had been born Friday in the Tijuana home.

The two women were charged with a felony--conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens. They were ordered held without bond pending a detention hearing Tuesday.

One INS investigator said there may be other participants in the United States and Mexico and more arrests could be made.

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

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

Make Down Payment

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

Back in their San Ysidro motel, the couple would make the final payment and receive the baby, according to Rogers. The baby would have been brought across the border by Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, because American couples arouse suspicion.

The seven smuggled babies have been traced to Kalama; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Springfield, Ill.; Milwaukee, and New York City, as well as California and Maryland, Rogers said. He said the alleged ring may have smuggled as many as 100 babies.