American Notes San Diego

The first break in the case came, oddly, in Dover, Ark., in the July arrest of a publisher who was charged with counterfeiting adoption documents. Then last week the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service sprang a trap on a mother-daughter team described as the key dealers in a baby-smuggling ring that may have sold as many as 150 infants to American couples in the past two years. Juanita Leyva-Vargas, 52, and her daughter Melinda, 25, were arrested in San Diego after they handed a five-day-old Mexican infant to Phil and Linda Phillips of Kalama, Wash. Authorities said the baby dealers operated from an unlicensed home for unwed Mexican mothers in nearby Tijuana. The ring allegedly received as much as $10,000 a child.

The Phillipses decided to cooperate after Immigration officials informed them that a girl they had adopted earlier was an illegal alien. The INS allowed them to keep the child because the parents believed the adoption was legal. Other couples duped by the ring have been traced to eight states from California to New York. Authorities say they will allow these parents to keep their children if they were adopted innocently. The Tijuana ring is believed to have smuggled in nearly as many Mexican infants over the past two years as had come in legally for adoption.