Mexico Involved in Most Child Kidnappings
Jake Rollow

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children handles some 1,000 international abduction cases annually, nearly a third of which involve Mexico. In fact, more than any other country, the Center’s international division cases concern children brought from or taken to Mexico.

The high volume is due to Mexico’s proximity, the fluidity of the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of Mexican migrants in the States, and economic reasons, say staffers of NCMEC’s International Division.

To handle the caseload, the international division’s 10-person staff includes three Hispanics (one Mexican and two Bolivians) and is directed by Julia Alanen, who speaks Spanish fluently. Additionally, two legal interns will join them from Mexico this summer.

NCMEC’s international division manages cases in which the child is brought to or taken from the United States. Nearly all of its cases are family abductions and the team has access to all NCMEC’s resources to locate the child. In any case, staffers may utilize privately owned databases of names and addresses, law enforcement officials nationwide, missing child posters at Wal-Mart and photo postcard mailings. They can acquire customs and passport information from the Department of Homeland Security, and may work with personnel of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Secret Service and the U.S.-Postal Service.

In addition to locating the child, a large part of the division’s work is to guide law enforcement officials, attorneys, judges and parents through the legal processes relevant to international abduction, with which Alanen says they are frequently unfamiliar. Drafted at the 1980 Hague convention, the set of laws governing child abduction are fairly complex, country specific and are only in effect once two countries have agreed to them bilaterally. The United States has such agreements with 55 countries.

On incoming abductions, in which the child has been brought from another country to the United States, the case will be held in a U.S.-court where the child is located. The Center’s international division works with attorneys and judges to determine where the child belongs. The outcome may depend on where the child’s habitual residence is or, once moved from that residence (even if moved wrongfully), if the child has resettled elsewhere.

On outgoing abductions, in which the child has been taken from the United States, Case Specialist Maureen Heads says much of the Center’s work is to assist the left-behind parent. Heads explains the legal process to such parents and may help them to create their petition, which will be used as argument in court.

Heads, a California-born Mexican, works primarily on outgoing cases to Mexico. She says the process can be difficult. Mexico requires original documents in petitions. In the case of birth certificates and divorce decrees, these are not always easy to procure if they were created in Mexico, contends Heads, who says this is common among her cases. Additionally, many of the left-behind parents she works with are undocumented and unsure what legal access they have. The Hague laws, however, do not pay attention to nationality. Finally, all documents must be translated, and not all left-behind parents are bilingual or able to translate the legal documents. The Center plans to have the two Mexican legal interns help with translation this summer.

The United States, like many of the wealthier countries that signed onto the Hague convention, does not pay the costs of international abduction cases. Therefore, the international division at NCMEC also works to maintain its International Child Abduction Network – a group of attorneys who take cases pro-bono or on a sliding scale, depending on the parent’s finances.

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(Jake Rollow is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at jakerollow@yahoo.com)

© 2005, Hispanic Link News Service
07/10/05
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