“Learn To Do Right; Seek Justice. Defend The Oppressed. Take Up The Cause Of The Fatherless.” Isaiah 1:17
Martin Luther posts his Theses
In retirement, our father had a unique spirituality: Almost daily Mass – during which he prayed for the (preferably painful) deaths of the world’s dictators, the rosary, and readings. Eventually, he abandoned the idea that the Virgin Mary could miraculously “sneak” bad guys into Heaven. But he was firmly - chiseled-in-marble - convinced that there is “a special place in Heaven” for adoptive parents.
Beyond “Damn it!,” I don’t believe I ever heard him curse; I mean “really curse”!
One thing would spark him into such anger that he would leave a room or conversation: Someone – anyone of any degree of friendship/relationship – daring to make a statement – any kind of statement – against missionary priests and Sisters.
Daddy didn’t tolerate “locker room” speech. Yet (I’m convinced), he would be cussin’ like a sailor – “from now ‘til the cows come home” - if he saw The New York Times headline “Born Abroad and Fearful of ICE, Adoptees Try to Prove They Belong.” (March 23, 2025, Elizabeth Williamson)
The Times reports, as many as 200,000 adoptees are vulnerable to deportation because they lack U.S. citizenship or important proof of it.
“Don’t mistreat widows or orphans.
If you do and they cry out to me,
you can be sure I’ll take them most seriously;
I’ll show my anger and come raging among you with the sword,
and your wives will end up widows and your children orphans.”
Exodus 22:22-24
"Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow."
Isaiah 1:17
"Religion that is pure and undefiled
before God and the Father is this:
to visit orphans and widows in their affliction..."
James 1:27
“This is what the Lord Almighty said:
‘Administer true justice;
show mercy and compassion to one another.
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless….’”
Zechariah 7:9-10
Our father firmly believed that anyone who adopted and lovingly cared for a child – as did St. Joseph in Daddy’s reading of the Gospels – merited a clear path into Heaven.
Prior to the passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, intercountry adoptions approved by courts and government agencies did not automatically guarantee U.S. citizenship. After the Act, intercountry adoptees were granted automatic citizenship – provided they were younger than 18; the Act also applied to future adoptions when it took effect in 2002. Adoptees who arrived in the United States before February 27, 1983 or who were brought to the U.S. on tourist or medical visas were excluded from its protections and left without legal status once their visas expired.
Others, while legally in the U.S. are still subject to deportation if they have a criminal history, including for drug offenses like marijuana possession. In fact, a state-issued post-conviction relief for minor offenses like marijuana possession - 24 states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized recreational marijuana, which includes decriminalization, while approximately 7 additional states have specific decriminalization policies in place (treating possession as a civil penalty rather than a criminal offense) – does not protect an immigrant’s lawful status in the U.S. At present, not a single immigration consequence tied to drugs has been changed since the drug laws – including making marijuana the equivalent of heroin - were expanded under Ronald Regan in 1988.
“The failure to reform federal immigration law means even more people have been deported. In 2015, we analyzed data from 2002 to 2012 and found 260,000 people deported whose most serious offense was drug-related, with drug use or possession offenses as the most common. This amounted to one of every four deportations of immigrants with a criminal conviction during that time period. In this report, Human Rights Watch and the Drug Policy Alliance analyze 17 years and four months of data (from 2002 to 2020) and find that between 2013 and 2020, an additional 240,000 people have been deported whose most serious offense was for drugs, amounting to about one of every five deportations of immigrants with a criminal conviction for the years 2013-2020. The total amount of people deported whose most serious offense was for drugs between 2002 and 2020 is approximately 500,000.”
(“’Disrupt and Vilify’: The War on Immigrants Inside the US War on Drugs,” A joint report by Human Rights Watch and Drug Policy Alliance, July 15, 2024.)
[Call it a “Catholic thing,” if you’d like, but those of us of a certain age and educated in Catholic grade schools remember “mite boxes.” We’d put money saved from “giving up” certain pleasures during Lent in the small boxes distributed just before Ash Wednesday. The money was to “feed” or “rescue” “starving children in China.” That idea – “the poor starving children in China” – was used by Catholic mothers to encourage or force children to eat their Brussel sprouts or peas. While teaching in China in the early 2000s, I shared those childhood memories with some of my Chinese friendsthey could not stop laughing.]
International adoptions of war orphans and refugees began in the 1940s; Americans adopted more than 500,000 children from abroad – more than any other nation.
The problem…
Shifting American legal requirements, corruption – by American “adoption agencies” and “adoption lawyers” and in the home countries of the adoptees - resulted in problems that persist today.
The international adoption boom peaked in 2004; by 2023 the numbers had plummeted by 94% according to the Adoptions Statistics Dashboard of the Department of State. Since 1999, most international adoptees in the U.S. have come from China (29%), Russia (16%), Guatemala (10%), South Korea (8%), or Ethiopia (6%).
All five have now limited or abolished international adoptions. Russia prohibited U.S. citizens from adopting in 2013 and it appears that no Russian children were adopted internationally in 2024. However, Texas Representative Michael McCaul, in a December 4, 2025 statement before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations hearing on “The Abduction of Ukrainian Children by the Russian Federation” testified:
“The Russian Federation has abducted at least 20,000 children — that we know of — and every expert I’ve talked to believes the real number is high, much higher than that.
“They are also indoctrinating and militarizing Ukrainian children in the occupied territories — possibly up to a million.
“According to the video [shown to the representative by the Ukrainian ambassador the day before his testimony], Russia has allocated 7 BILLION (emphasis in original text) dollars in its 26 – 28 budget for a national project titled ‘youth and children,’ — essentially, militarized youth organizations.
“The ambassador told me, again, that one million children live in the occupied territories — vulnerable to brainwashing and abuse. And more than 43,000 have already enrolled in Russia’s paramilitary youth program.
“… [I]n these territories, the textbooks spew false information and conspiracy theories about NATO and the free world.
“All this is part of Russia’s effort to turn future generations against Ukraine, the United States, and Europe because, in their words, they are preparing for a large-scale war against NATO….”
South Korea ended international adoptions in 2025 after decades of questionable – or illegal – “selling” of infants and toddlers; Guatemala stopped international adoptions after multiple investigations of “baby brokers” and the “kidnapping” of children who were sold to unwitting American adoptive parents. American authorities are continuing efforts to reunite Haitian children who were improperly “adopted” by American during the on-going crisis in that country.
During the post-World War II era, children who were legally adopted received new birth certificates with their adoptive parents’ names. But the American parents were often unaware of the federal requirement that those children become naturalized citizens. Adoptive parents often did not pursue naturalization/citizenship for them, making those kids – now adults – subject to removal under the current administration.
In addition to international adoptions, an unknown number of children were brought to the United States on medical visas for services unavailable in their home countries; others were sheltered by Americans posted abroad – often members of the military – and came to the States with their new families, who did not pursue legal adoption and naturalization.
Immigration lawyer and executive director of Adoptees United in Minneapolis Gregory Luce estimates that 200,000 children brought to the United States since 1968 have grown up without U.S. citizenship and only discover their status when they apply for a passport, Social Security benefits or a Real ID. (“Born Abroad and Fearful of ICE, Adoptees Try to Prove They Belong,” The New York Times, March 23, 2026. Elizabeth Williamson)
The 2000 Childhood Citizenship Act granted automatic citizenship to adoptees who were younger than 18 on February 27, 2001, the day the law took effect. Up to 75,000 adoptees did not qualify because they were older than 18 on that date.
Tens of thousands of others – who entered the country on tourist or medical visas or came to the States on orphan visas – whose parents did not complete the process for them became ineligible for citizenship. International adoptees who – in error – failed to apply for citizenship through the exemption are often fearful of an administration that has promised to deport millions.
Mr. Luce, whose organization sponsors a pro bono legal clinic for adult international adoptees told The New York Times:
“Naturalization in this environment is much harder and much riskier. Most people are super scared, and the hard question for me is always, what should they do? Naturalize, renew a green card, do nothing?”
The present administration’s ICE invasion of Minnesota was deliberately political (and more than a little crazy or both). Moreover, it was not aimed at a state with a major immigrant population like Florida (21%), Nevada (20%), Texas (18%) or Arizona (13%).The November 10, 2025 Immigration Research Initiative report “50 States: Immigrants by Number and Share” ranks Minnesota as 24th of fifty states - with nine percent of the state’s total population compared to a nationwide 16 percent.
The report noted:
“There are 50 million immigrants in the United States, making up 15 percent of the overall population. This includes all people who are living in the United States and were born in another country, irrespective of immigration status.
“Around the country, the share of immigrants in the population varies from two percent in West Virginia to 28 percent in California….”
Minnesota has one of the largest concentrations of foreign-born adoptees in the nation. Despite the presidential administration’s focus on Black Somali immigrants, the state has the nation’s highest concentration of Korean adoptees, in part because of the post Korean War emphasis on transracial adoptions and, in part, because the state’s predominantly white population is composed largely of descendants of Scandinavian and German immigrants with cultural backgrounds more accepting of non-biological kinships than those from southern and eastern Europe. Public interracial conflicts were less prominent in mid-twentieth century Minnesota than other parts of the United States.
While it is the most permanent proof of citizenship for those who are naturalized, for foreign-born adoptees under the Child Citizen Act a mere American passport does not always provide protection in ICE raids. As a result and because a certificate of citizenship is difficult to revoke, adoptees are left scrambling – both for citizenship/naturalization and the appropriate documentation, which is available through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices after an approval process that involves submitting supporting documents. While the agency has recently waived the $1,300 filing fee for adult international adoptees, wait time ranges from six to 18 months.
At present, the bipartisan Protect Adoptees and American Families Act, introduced in late September 2025, has not received a congressional hearing, despite support from evangelical Christians, who have a long history of embracing transnational adoptions.
Given the Trump administration’s drastic cuts in the number of refugees – from 125,000 under the Biden Administration to just 7,500 and its favoring of white Afrikaner South Africans – the number of transnational immigrations will continue to remain miniscule for at least the next three years.
I’ve gotta believe the idea of denying citizenship and its benefits to adults who were transnationally adopted as infants or children would have my father let loose with a – grammatically correct – blue streak.
And I suspect St. Joseph would join him in calling down the wrath of Heaven.