INS Says Baby Found 8 Months Ago With Aliens Is U.S. Citizen

Immigration officials disclosed Monday that “Baby Marcos”--the unidentified infant who was found nearly eight months ago with a group of smuggled aliens at the Mexican border--is a U.S. citizen who apparently was abandoned by drug-using parents.

The baby’s identity and that of his parents was determined after his paternal grandfather, Rene Herrera Perez of Tijuana, came forward after seeing pictures of the child in the Mexican media, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The child was identified as Marcos Antonio Herrera, who was born on Sept. 20, 1987, in Riverside General Hospital. He has been living with a foster family in San Diego since being found last May in a car with a group of Uruguayans and two Mexican smugglers who were attempting to illegally enter the United States from Tijuana.

While authorities often find infants among the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens arrested annually in the San Diego area, officials said this was the first case in memory in which it has taken so long for a parent or relative to step forward. The delay prompted officials to go public last week, relating details of the case to the U.S. and Mexican press.

Julieta Betancourt Perez, the driver of the vehicle in which the 15-month-old child was found, is now believed to be the child’s grandmother. Betancourt, a 40-year-old Tijuana resident who served a 100-day sentence for alien smuggling in connection with the case, initially volunteered that she was the child’s grandmother but later denied it, according to the INS.

The father, Marcos Antonio Herrera Perez, listed as 17 at the time of his son’s birth, was described by immigration authorities as a heroin addict and undocumented worker from Mexico who resided in San Ysidro, the heavily Latino San Diego community that borders Tijuana. Officials have been in contact with him.

The boy’s mother, Gloria Elena Cota, 29 at the time the boy was born, according to a birth certificate on file in Riverside County, was described by the INS as a drug user and a resident of Mexicali, Mexico.

Federal officials said they would not remove the child from foster care until a court ruled on the fitness of his natural parents.