Woman Accused of Buying Babies
Welcome to America, where everything is a commodity. If you want it, someone out there is willing, ready, and able to sell it to you- including babies.
LAREDO -- A South Texas adoption agency is under investigation and one of its workers is behind bars in what authorities described as an international baby-selling scheme that preyed for at least three years on perhaps hundreds of pregnant young women from Mexico.
The worker, Maria Dolores Bondoc of Laredo, was arrested Tuesday on charges of smuggling women into Texas to buy their babies for adoption.
Authorities say Bondoc, who worked for the San Antonio-based AAA Alamo Adoption Agency, found the women by running an ad in Fama, a national magazine in Mexico that targets young people.
"A woman enticing young women without any regard for their personal safety or well-being. . . . This is one of the most horrific cases we know of, when they're dealing in babies and desperate women in this situation," said John Montoya, chief of the Laredo sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.
"We're back into slavery issues -- selling babies -- and that's what it comes to."
Police expect to make more arrests in connection with the case, Webb County District Attorney Joe Rubio said.
"We know dozens of babies are involved," said Daniel Hernandez, the Mexican consul in Laredo. "Authorities have reason to believe that over the months and years there could be hundreds of babies involved, but at this point the evidence is not there yet."
To me, it seems a sad commentary on the state of humanity when someone is willing to trade on the poverty and desperation of poor, uneducated, and desperate young women in order to make a buck. What kind of moral reprobate would seize an oopportunity like this to profit off the suffering and desperation of others? I'm not sure the applicable laws allow for putting the people responsible for this despicable trade behind bars for an appropriate period of time- I'm thinking forever here.
