Colombian conservative congresswoman Ángela Vergara claims to be going through hell. Last Friday, she took to social media to report that her 22-year-old son, Rafael Alonso Vergara, had been detained in the United States by immigration police (ICE) and had been “imprisoned and chained” for 18 days.

In a video posted on social media, she said: “This is a person who was awaiting his legal situation, but he had his work permit and social security. A young man who has never even committed a traffic violation but who, like many Colombians, is going through hell.”

Vergara is a member of the Conservative Party, which has openly supported the Republican Party in the United States and celebrated Donald Trump’s return to the White House. In response to criticism against her, she rejects the rumors accusing her of celebrating the deportation of Latinos or calling for military intervention by Washington in Colombia.

The representative to the Colombian House, who is usually not very visible in the national political debate, has used her social media accounts and spoken to various media outlets to provide more details about her son’s arrest: she claims that he was detained on a public road in the state of Louisiana at 4 a.m. and that, after being identified as an immigrant, he was arrested by ICE agents.

Vergara had been in the United States since 2022. A year after his arrival, he decided to apply for asylum. Since last month, right after learning of her son’s arrest, the politician says that the legal strategy has been to request voluntary return to Colombia, as she thought it would be the quickest alternative. “My son is not undocumented. My son is just another Latino who is suffering firsthand what thousands are suffering in the US. There are people like him who are not criminals,” she stressed.

Since returning to the Oval Office for his second term, Donald Trump has tightened immigration policy. He has increased funding for ICE and the Border Patrol. He has given them more autonomy and powers to carry out indiscriminate raids searching for undocumented immigrants while limiting visas and tightening agreements with other countries. In the last year, the Trump administration has deported more than 650,000 undocumented immigrants, according to estimates given by the government.

ICE and Border Patrol agents have become the nightmare of thousands of immigrants and the target of criticism for their excessive tactics. Dressed like paramilitaries, with their faces hidden by balaclavas or masks, they have been deployed in states and cities governed by Democrats, such as Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

They have carried out raids and surprise checks, abusing their power. Some 3,000 of these agents were deployed in Minneapolis, where they have been involved in some of the most ruthless episodes involving these forces. Barely two weeks apart, immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti as they were peacefully protesting in separate demonstrations against Donald Trump’s repressive policies. The deaths of these US citizens sparked a wave of outrage across the United States.

Trump suggested that he would ease immigration pressure, but days later he returned to the fray and boasted about mass deportations. He tasked Border Czar Tom Homan with calming tensions in Minnesota. Homan announced the withdrawal of immigration police, but assured that raids against immigrants would continue.

Ángela Vergara is now calling on her government to “intervene” so that “Colombians can return to their country quickly.” In a letter addressed to Foreign Minister Rosa Yolanda Villavicencio, the congresswoman urges Gustavo Petro’s administration to speed up the coordination of humanitarian flights for repatriated Colombians with the support of the Air Force to prevent citizens from being held indefinitely in detention centers even though they have already requested voluntary departure or have no pending administrative or judicial proceedings in the United States.

Last year, as soon as Trump had landed in the White House and launched his strategy of mass deportations, President Petro decided to suspend them briefly because humanitarian conditions were not guaranteed for returning citizens. After a brief standoff, the left-wing leader decided to resume flights using civilian and military aircraft.

The drama surrounding this family has not gone unnoticed by internet users, who have complained about the congresswoman’s “hypocrisy.” Vergara, a member of the traditional Conservative Party, belongs to the so-called pro-life caucus in Congress: a group of anti-abortion senators and representatives whose views mirror several ideas also defended by the MAGA faction of the Republican Party in the US.

Following the attack on conservative activist Charlie Kirk last September, Vergara mourned his death and warned of the alleged risk to pro-life activists in the US and Colombia. “His passing represents a loss for those of us who firmly defend life, family, and freedom. May this painful event remind us of the urgency of uniting in defense of our values in the face of violence and intolerance,” she said at the time.

Following the news, several false rumors have also been published, such as that the congresswoman founded a movement called “Latinas for Trump” or that she has openly called for Washington to intervene in the country. Both accusations, for which there is no known evidence, have been rejected by the congresswoman.

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A las 5.04 horas del 28 de septiembre de 2025, las cámaras del sexto piso del hotel Hyatt de San Luis Potosí captaron a Valeria salir de su habitación. Las imágenes muestran cómo la joven, de 28 años, toca en las puertas de varias habitaciones y después se queda parada en el pasillo. Cuando se regresa hacia la puerta de su propio cuarto, se abre otra, algo más alejada. Es la de la habitación 616. De ahí se había asomado en varias ocasiones la figura de un hombre. Le dice algo a Valeria y ella se dirige hacia allí. Después, entra. La puerta se cierra. Son las 5.07 de la madrugada. Una hora y 50 minutos más tarde, esas mismas cámaras graban cómo llegan con urgencia la gerente del hotel, el personal de seguridad y el novio de Valeria. Ella recuerda despertarse, oír cómo alguien mencionaba su nombre y darse cuenta de que no sabe ni dónde está ni quién es ese hombre en boxers que está dentro del cuarto. Está semidesnuda. Se tapa con una sábana y se va llorando a su habitación. Ahí se mira por primera vez al espejo y se da cuenta de que su ropa interior está del revés. “Fue cuando entré en pánico”, señala a EL PAÍS: “No conseguía hablar, solo lloraba. No sabía qué había pasado”.

Valeria fue diagnosticada con sonambulismo desde los seis años; en el estudio más reciente que se ha hecho aparecen pequeñas crisis epilépticas en las que ella no está consciente. Le pasan de forma recurrente. Nunca la habían puesto en peligro hasta que el 28 de septiembre entró en la habitación de Guillermo Baeza Prado, sobrino de Eugenio Baeza, fundador del imperio cárnico Grupo Bafar y uno de los hombres más ricos de México. El chico, de 27 años, también trabaja en esa compañía chihuahuense donde, además, es directivo su padre, Guillermo Baeza Faser. Valeria cuenta ahora con un dictamen médico —que señala lesiones sexuales— y uno psicológico —que registra estrés postraumático compatible con una agresión sexual— para enfrentarse a una de las familias más poderosas del país. Hasta el momento de esta publicación, ni el acusado ni el Grupo Bafar han contestado a las preguntas de este periódico.

El sonambulismo

Valeria es el nombre ficticio que ha elegido esta joven brasileña para contar su historia. Hace cinco años que llegó a vivir a Ciudad de México. Aquí conoció a su pareja y montó su propio negocio. Llevaba una vida muy tranquila, tenía planes de casarse y en el último tiempo lidiaba con una artritis que la había obligado a convivir con algunos dolores. Llegó a San Luis Potosí para celebrar con su pareja, Pedro (también nombre ficticio por seguridad), la boda de unos amigos. Lo pasaron bien, bebieron, bailaron, y a las cuatro de la mañana, pidieron un Uber de vuelta al hotel Hyatt, en el centro de San Luis Potosí. “Llegamos a la habitación, me quité el vestido, unas cosas que tenía en el pecho y me acosté”, narra Valeria: “Ya venía sin los zapatos”.

Su novio pidió una hamburguesa a la habitación, puso a cargar los celulares y se durmió. Un rato más tarde algo lo despertó. Se dio cuenta de que la joven no estaba en su cama. Se preocupó muy rápido. En estos años viviendo juntos, él la había visto levantarse y caminar por la casa, quedarse de pie en el pasillo o simplemente incorporarse y hablar. El sonambulismo —que tiene un factor hereditario— está considerada por los psiquiatras como una “condición en la cual la conciencia se encuentra suspendida y no existe capacidad de decisión ni control voluntario de los actos”. También una parte de la familia de Valeria lo tiene.

Pedro buscó por la habitación de hotel —“hasta por detrás de las cortinas”— y corriendo bajó a la recepción a pedir ayuda a las 6 de la mañana. Llamó a un amigo que estaba alojado en el mismo hotel para que lo apoyara en la búsqueda. Volvió a subir a la habitación y llegó por las escaleras de emergencia hasta el techo. No encontró a Valeria. Su amigo llamó a emergencias para poner un reporte por la desaparición de la joven. “Señores, necesito ver las cámaras, mi novia es sonámbula y necesito ayuda”, narra Pedro que exigió al personal del hotel. Eran las 6.20 de la mañana.

Las lesiones sexuales

El alojamiento tuvo que pedir autorización y los minutos pasaban. Finalmente bajaron al estacionamiento —que también revisaron— y en una caseta los pusieron frente a las grabaciones. En esas imágenes se ve la entrada de Valeria en una habitación que no es la suya. “Algo está pasando, necesito que vayamos a ese cuarto”, dijo Pedro. Se apresuraron hacia allí. La gerente del hotel iba primero. Rozando las siete de la mañana, entraron en el cuarto. Aquí vuelve Valeria: “Yo estaba en la cama pegada a la ventana, de espaldas. Oigo mi nombre. Después que la señora pregunta a la otra persona: ‘¿Por qué no llamaste a la recepción?’“. Baeza no contesta a eso, solo dice: ”No pasó nada, no hicimos nada, ella durmió en otra cama”. “Pero yo miro y veo que la otra cama está hecha”, cuenta Valeria.

Al sacar a su novia del cuarto y comprobar que llevaba su ropa interior al revés, Pedro sale a acusar a Baeza de violación. Los policías reciben el aviso a las 7.15 y llegan 15 minutos después al hotel. A las 8.30, junto con la gerente del hotel, forzaron la entrada de la habitación, porque Baeza no abría. Le pidieron que se vistiera y tres minutos más tarde formalizan su arresto. Los policías recogen en el informe que el acusado dice: “Abrí la puerta y le dije [a ella] que pasara que yo le ayudaba y dormimos en camas separadas”. Los agentes, al igual que Valeria, corroboraron que la otra cama de ese cuarto “estaba completamente tendida”.

Llevaron primero a Baeza a la sede del Ministerio Público en San Luis Potosí y después a Valeria y Pedro. Cuando la joven estaba dentro de las instalaciones contestando al primer peritaje psicológico, un “viejito” le pide a Pedro salir a hablar afuera. “Yo ni quería salir, porque no sabía a qué me estaba enfrentando. Ahí llegó otro señor diciendo: ‘Oye, te aviso que al que estás acusando tiene una reputación impecable’. Resulta que era su papá”, relata el joven ahora: “Nos amenazó. Nos dijo que nos iba a fregar”.

A las 13.15 Baeza quedó liberado. La ministerio público firmó su “liberación inmediata” al entender que su detención había sido “ilegal”, puesto que los agentes de la policía habían tardado un “tiempo excesivo” en ponerlo a disposición del ministerio público a las 12.40, cuando había sido arrestado cuatro horas antes. “No se encuentra justificado además que los policías realizaron la detención de Guillermo Baeza sin un señalamiento directo de la víctima”, escribe la agente. La defensa de Valeria señala que no contaron con que el arrestado fue llevado primero al juzgado cívico antes de la Fiscalía, por eso, la demora.

A esa hora Valeria apenas estaba siendo examinada. El peritaje médico de la Fiscalía encontró ese día cuatro laceraciones vaginales y dos anales recientes, todas ellas todavía con color rojizo. Halló otras antiguas. A la pregunta de la Fiscalía de cuándo fue su última relación sexual consentida, Valeria dice con claridad el 22 de septiembre, es decir, casi una semana antes. La joven no presentaba hematomas en el resto de su cuerpo y tampoco se halló líquido seminal. Cuando llegaron al hotel, destrozados, hacía horas que Baeza había salido —acompañado de su padre— con sus maletas del hotel. La habitación entonces todavía no había sido precintada. Cuando ya fue revisada, a las 18.52, los peritos de la Fiscalía no encontraron nada.

El estrés postraumático

Después del 28 de septiembre comenzó la segunda fase de la pesadilla. “La peor parte fue al llegar a mi casa. Yo solo sentía vacío. Solo quería dormir, no podía hacer nada. Estaba en el cuarto viendo el techo todo el día. No quería ver a gente, no quería hablar con nadie”, narra Valeria. No podía trabajar, tampoco se atrevía a contarle a su familia lo que le había sucedido. En un peritaje privado, elaborado el 28 de octubre, un mes más tarde de aquella noche, se lee sobre el estado de Valeria: “Insomnio, hipervigilancia, ansiedad persistente y somatización: náuseas, fatigas, pérdida de apetito. Muestra sentimientos de evitación reprimiendo procesos emocionales con la intencionalidad de no revivir un evento o proceso traumático”.

Durante todo este tiempo, Valeria ha estado tomando antidepresivos y trabajando con su terapeuta, especialmente por la culpa que sentía de no acordarse de lo que había sucedido dentro de esa habitación. El psiquiatra Andrés Barrera, especialista en trastornos del sueño, explica a EL PAÍS que no es posible para las personas sonámbulas recordar los eventos. “Son conductas no deseadas que ocurren durante la transición de la vigilia al sueño”, describe el investigador de la Clínica de Trastorno del Sueño de la UNAM: “El sonambulismo es un despertar que ocurre en la fase del sueño profundo y se manifiesta en un estado alterado de la consciencia. La persona no está consciente o no recuerda que se levantó estando dormida”. Algunas personas sonámbulas, señala Barrera, deambulan, ingieren alimentos, abren puertas e incluso pueden llegar a conducir.

El perito forense que analizó a Valeria el 28 de octubre añade al sonambulismo un trastorno de estrés postraumático: “Las fragmentaciones y vacíos amnésicos se explican clínicamente como fenómenos propios de la memoria traumática. No deben interpretarse como falsedad o contradicción, sino como un correlato clínico esperado tras un evento de agresión sexual, por relaciones con un proceso traumático que se retrata sobre el proceso corporal”.

El consentimiento

La defensa de Guillermo Baeza está a cargo del despacho Torsa Abogados, del que es fundador e integrante el secretario de Gobierno de San Luis Potosí, Guadalupe Torres Sánchez. A su vez, la esposa del funcionario, Xitlálic Sánchez, es la vicefiscal jurídica del Ministerio Público de San Luis Potosí. También su hermana, Silvia Torres Sánchez, quien estuvo antes con él en el despacho, es magistrada del Supremo Tribunal de Justicia del Estado desde septiembre de 2025. Este vínculo con el poder siempre ha preocupado a los asesores jurídicos de Valeria. Especialmente después de conocer que el Ministerio Público ha decretado el “no ejercicio de la acción penal” contra Baeza. Ese desestimiento es lo que lleva solicitando la defensa del acusado desde el 11 de diciembre: “No existe un dato de prueba que señale un hecho que la ley castigue como delito y mucho menos que mi representado haya participado en ese hecho”.

Sobre las cámaras, la ropa interior del revés o las lesiones sexuales, la defensa apunta que Valeria entró sin ejercicio de la violencia en la habitación 616, que al ir en “estado de ebriedad ella pudo colocárselas [las bragas] de manera errónea” y que también “es muy probable que las huellas de penetración reciente se deban a la relación sexual que tuvo en fecha 22 de septiembre”. Además, la defensa señala como clave el dictamen químico forense que “no encuentra líquido seminal ni células espermáticas”: “Ante tal situación es claro que al día de hoy no tenemos un hecho de índole sexual”, escribe el abogado Mauro Lara.

Sin embargo, según el Código Penal mexicano y también el de San Luis Potosí, no se necesita de eyaculación para considerarse una agresión sexual, tampoco la violencia. En el artículo 266 en el federal y en el 173 en el estatal se recoge como violación “al que sin violencia realice cópula con persona que no tenga la capacidad de comprender el significado del hecho o por cualquier causa no pueda resistirlo”. Ahí entra, según los psiquiatras, el sonambulismo: “Se concluye que la víctima no se encontraba en condiciones neuropsicológicas de otorgar consentimiento alguno, ya que cursaba un episodio de parasomnia no REM, situación que imposibilita la consciencia del acto, la voluntad y la autodeterminación corporal”, apuntó el perito privado que analizó a Valeria.

Los abogados de Baeza insisten en que en un delito de violación “el dicho de la víctima es crucial, pero en este caso la propia víctima dice no recordar lo sucedido”. Sin embargo, los psiquiatras afirman: “Durante el sonambulismo existe actividad motora sin vigilia consciente y amnesia total del episodio”. La Fiscalía de San Luis Potosí ha obviado en su resolución la condición sonámbula de Valeria y ha aducido que ella entró “sin coerción” en la habitación 616 y que al no presentar lesiones externas (y los desgarros anales y vaginales pudieron haber sido de días antes de su relación consensuada), no se acredita la circunstancia de privación ilegal de la libertad ni de violación.

En estos cinco meses de espera, tanto Valeria como Pedro han temido por su seguridad. Por un lado, la Fiscalía entregó su información personal a la defensa, por lo que el acusado y su familia conocen su domicilio y su número telefónico. Además, Guillermo Baeza Fares, padre del imputado, ha vigilado en redes sociales tanto a la víctima como a su pareja, según ha podido comprobar este periódico.

“Yo sé que no fue mi culpa, ya trabajé mucho eso, pero me da mucha vergüenza que haya pasado”, relata Valeria: “Y luego me pregunto por qué, ¿por qué conmigo?“. A lo que Pedro añade: ”Estamos hablando de una de las familias más poderosas y ricas de México, que también traen al Gobierno de San Luis Potosí ahí metido. Entonces, ¿cómo podemos combatir eso?“.

When he was eight years old, Markus Lidman realized he was different from the other children in Pitea, a town in northern Sweden. They had all inherited the same pale skin tone as their parents. He, on the other hand, was dark-skinned. “I decided to ask them if they were really my parents, and they told me they had adopted me in Colombia in 1982. They sat with me and showed me a video of the orphanage,” he recalls. He had been born Luis Alberto Sánchez in Cali, a hot city 7,000 mile away. Like 4,500 other Swedes born between 1970 and 2000, his Colombian parents had abandoned him. Or at least that’s what the adoption papers said, without providing any details.

From that moment on, Markus began to feel a void that he still feels at age 43. “Questions started popping up for my biological mother: ‘Why did you abandon me? Wasn’t I lovable enough? Did you have a drug addiction and couldn’t take care of me?’” he says via video call after finishing his shift as a waiter at a pub. He believes the lack of answers has affected him at different times. “I panicked about women leaving me. I did everything to avoid it. And when my girlfriends dumped me, I attempted suicide,” he says before saying that he now is married and has a daughter. “Years later, I did drugs and stupid things. When you have a hole, you fill it with shit.”

Markus decided to look for his mother. The problem was that he only had the scant information from his documents. “All they say is her name, and I think it’s made up. When I Google it, all that comes up is an inventor from the 1900s with a mustache,” he explains. He asked for help in Facebook groups and that’s where, a year and a half ago, he met Mikael Kjelleros. He’s something of a celebrity among Swedish adoptees: he found his Colombian mother in 2024 and now helps others. He recommended that Markus take a DNA test on MyHeritage, a platform that has genetic data on some 10 million people worldwide. That didn’t work either.

However, meeting Mikael was a turning point for Markus. Both are children of single mothers, born in Cali in the 1980s, and both lived in the same orphanage, with adoptive parents who stayed at the same hotel when they came to pick them up. The difference is that Mikael has found his mother, and she has told him that she didn’t abandon him: on the eighth day after he was born, she went to the hospital to see him in the incubator, and the nurses told her that he was no longer there, that some relatives had already taken him. Markus hopes to find a similar answer. “I think that, just like in Mikael’s case, something bad happened to me and my mother,” he says.

A Swedish government report, published in June 2025, gives weight to these suspicions. “Sweden cooperated with countries where structural risks existed and accepted procedures that would not have been acceptable within the national system,” the text states. Thousands of women in the Global South, from Colombia to India, were deceived or coerced into signing documents consenting to the adoption of their children. There were children declared orphans when they were not, exorbitant payments to intermediaries, and documents containing false information. Sixty thousand adoptions were registered between 1969 and 2022, of which 5,698 originated in Colombia. The peak was in the 1980s, when private adoptions were still permitted, with lawyers processing the paperwork without oversight from the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF).

Tobias Hübinette, a professor of Intercultural Studies at Karlstad University, who was adopted in South Korea, explains in a video call that the Swedish state had two main motivations for joining the wave of international adoptions promoted by the United States after the Korean War (1950–1953). On the one hand, to provide children for Swedish couples who could not have them for medical reasons. On the other, because of the belief that in this way it could “help what they called ‘the Third World,’ which they considered to be overpopulated.” “The state didn’t care that these were corrupt adoptions because they thought it was for the greater good. They believed that the children would be better off here than in countries with wars and poverty,” he explains.

A baby carrier

Helena Wager, born in Medellín in 1973, says time and again that she has a happy life. “I have three children, a husband of 28 years, and a granddaughter. I’m a yoga teacher; I give classes. I’m a very happy woman. With a wonderful family, with wonderful friends. I have nothing to complain about,” she says in a video call from her car, bundled up against the Stockholm winter chill. She adds that her adoptive parents have supported her in everything. But something has weighed heavily on her since she was a teenager and intensified when she had children: “The only pain I feel is the disconnection from my history. There’s something in my heart, like a feeling of loneliness, something genetic. I need to know what happened to me and to my Colombian parents.”

She gives a quick summary of her story. “I was taken from my mother as soon as I was born because, apparently, she couldn’t take care of me. I was taken to a convent, and then a ‘baby carrier’ for European families came for me. She brought me to Sweden, and my adoptive parents picked me up at the airport. The most disturbing thing is that a few years ago I had a DNA test, and it turned out I’m a second cousin of a friend she also brought over,” she says. That’s all she knows. The woman who took her to Sweden could have helped her, but she didn’t. “Now she’s 85 and has dementia. But when I was a teenager, I wrote her some very harsh letters. ‘I know you know, you must have met my mother, you must know everything.’ She never said a word to me.”

Wager has had some bad experiences in her search. “There are so many scams, people who tell you they’re going to help you, ask for money, and then disappear. I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” she says. Then, she met Mikael in a Facebook group and decided to trust him. “I didn’t expect him to contact me, but he did without asking for anything in return,” Helena says. Although her chances of success are slim — she doesn’t have a single name to look for — she remains optimistic. “I trust in God. He decides whether finding my parents is my destiny or not,” she says.

Unlike Markus, Helena has learned Spanish and feels a stronger connection to her birth country. “I identify as Colombian and Latina. I don’t connect with Swedes. Whereas, as soon as I see or hear a Latino in a shop, I get excited and feel at home,” she says. “Now I know how to navigate Swedish social norms better than when I was a child: I try to be normal, not draw attention to myself, I even turn pale in the winter. But with my close friends, I’m Latina. I’m like the sun here, spreading my tentacles of light and warmth.” She has been to Bolivia and Costa Rica, but doesn’t want to visit Colombia until she finds some relatives. “It would be like returning to an empty house,” she says.

The Colombian flag

Marisol Cortés, a caregiver for people with disabilities, strongly connects to her Colombian identity. “When I was a teenager, I always received racist comments about my hair. I didn’t feel a connection with Swedes. So something told me I had to connect with my people, with Latinos,” she says in a video call. She confronted her adoptive mother about learning Spanish. “She got very angry. ‘Why would you do that? You shouldn’t,’ she told me. I replied that I didn’t care and went to the library to find books. I put up a whiteboard with words in my room and learned,” she recalls. She shows the Colombian flag she has in her room. “Of all the things I have, it’s the one I’m most proud of. It reminds me of my past. It’s something no one can take away from me.”

All she knows about her story is that a police officer found her in a garbage container in Bogotá 43 years ago, on May 15, 1982, and that she inherited his last name. She was adopted by a construction worker and a bank employee. “I ask them for more information, but they don’t help me. ‘We’ve already talked about this, you have all the documents,’ is all they say. I don’t believe them. I feel like they’re hiding something from me,” she says. Like Helena, she has had bad experiences while searching for her mother: a woman from southwestern Colombia contacted her years ago and then stopped responding. “Maybe I got too excited and scared her. I wrote to her again, and she blocked me.”

Marisol has prepared herself to be rejected from her Colombian family. “If they don’t want me, that’s fine. But at least I need to find my papers, to know the truth. I feel that this way I can put all the pieces back together and finally feel peace,” she says. Her goal, now that her children have moved out, is to buy a house in Colombia and live six months in each country. “It might seem strange, and maybe I wouldn’t belong there either, but something tells me I’ll feel better than here,” she says. “It’s my life, and I don’t care what they say. I was born in Colombia, and I’m going to die there.”

A country of origin

Susan Branco, an expert on transnational adoptions at Palo Alto University in the United States, who was adopted from Colombia, explains in a video call that several factors led the South American country to begin placing children with foreign couples in the late 1960s. “The Catholic Church, which held significant influence, felt it had to do something about the large number of children living on the streets. And so they began promoting international adoptions, which they saw as a better option than encouraging family planning,” she explains. According to Branco, there was growing support for a narrative that portrayed European or North American couples as “responsible,” and people with limited economic resources in Colombia as “irresponsible.”

The system quickly became corrupt. Helí Abel Torrado, a lawyer specializing in family law, recounts over the phone how he used to criticize several of his colleagues. “They were always hunting for unborn children. They would take a peasant woman, a domestic worker, and give her protection until the birth so she would sign the authorizations,” he says. As early as 1981, The New York Times reported on “a multimillion dollar international ring in which hundreds of poor Andean children were kidnapped or bought from their mothers and sold under forged birth certificates and adoption papers to childless couples from the United States and Europe.” The then-director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), Juan Jacobo Muñoz, acknowledged the problems: “The lawyers prefer to give a child to a European couple who is willing to spend $10,000 rather than to a Colombian who offers much less and pays in pesos.”

Colombia started taking action in the late 1980s: it approved a new Children’s Code in 1989, which centralized the authority to authorize adoptions in the ICBF, and ratified the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in 1998. Then, in 2012, an investigative report by Caracol Television revealed that the ICBF was still carrying out practices such as prematurely declaring that a child had been abandoned. “I hate the Family Welfare Institute for denying me a second chance to prove that I could raise my son,” said a woman in the report. The agency rejected the accusations and stated that there were protocols in place to determine whether biological parents showed they were committed. The following year, it ended all international adoptions of children under six years of age who did not have a disability.

Lawyer Torrado says that many parents did abandon their children and would likely never admit it. “They would leave children wrapped in newspaper on any street corner. What was better then? Leaving them in an ICBF orphanage with a very long waiting list for domestic adoptions, or giving them to foreign couples?” he asks. Torrado also argues that today there are procedures that guarantee informed consent and that parents are given a period in which they can change their minds about the adoption.

Swedish expert Hübinette questions international adoptions, even legal ones. “They only consider the economic perspective, and that’s very naive. There are psychological aspects, such as racism,” he says.

Branco adds that knowing one’s identity “is a human right that was taken away from many people without their consent.” “Denying it causes mental health problems throughout life,” she stresses.

The ICBF declined to comment for this report and noted that these are cases that happened decades ago.

Mikael and Diana reunite

Diana Muñoz had her first child on December 31, 1984, in Cali. She was 18 years old, worked in a restaurant, and the child’s father had abandoned his responsibilities. “They discharged me from the hospital, but they left the baby in an incubator, and I had to go see him every day. On the eighth day, I went, and he was gone. They told me the mother had taken him. How could that be? I was the mother,” she recounts over the phone. All she could do was file a report that just gathered dust. “It wasn’t like it is now, where you can go to many institutions for help. Forty years ago, you went to the police, and that was what they could do,” she says. “I didn’t even get to name him. How can you find someone without a name?”

She heard from her son again four decades later, in September 2024, when she was living in Spain with her two grown daughters. She read a message on Facebook from Mikael Kjelleros, a Swedish man who was looking for a Diana Muñoz who would have been 32 years old when she gave birth to him on December 31, 1984. The age didn’t match, but they decided to have a video call, and within seconds she knew who he was. “I think you’re my son because you look a lot like my father,” she told him. He was hesitant, fearing a scam. They took a DNA test that confirmed they were mother and son, and they reunited in Madrid a few weeks later.

They are both happy, but admit that establishing a relationship hasn’t been easy. “He still doesn’t trust me enough for many things. When I was in Sweden, I realized that people there are very reserved, used to being self-absorbed. It takes time,” Diana explains from Valencia. Mikael says something similar from Stockholm: “I speak Spanish, but she speaks very fast, and sometimes we don’t understand each other.” “When we see each other, I feel like we have to make the most of a very limited amount of time. That’s stressful,” he adds.

Mikael is angry with the Swedish government, the Colombian government, and the orphanage. “They stole 40 years of my mother’s life from me. Even though we’re together again, our relationship isn’t the same as the one she has with my sisters, and it never will be. People don’t understand that my identity, with my language and my culture, was lost,” he explains. In his case, it’s even more frustrating to have had a bad relationship with his adoptive mother. “She brought me from the other side of the world and immediately lost interest,” he says. He doesn’t understand how, for so many years, people he knew told him to be grateful to be in a rich country like Sweden, since in Colombia “I would have been on the streets.” “That wasn’t true: my mother and my sisters have had a good life,” he points out.

He works as a municipal employee in Stockholm and has little free time, but he has decided to help some of the people who contact him. “I can’t promise them anything, but I listen to them: it’s important for them to see that someone who has been in the same situation understands them,” he says. He has also managed to get in touch with Colombian mothers searching for their children. He wants Colombia to open an investigation like Sweden did, apologize to the adopted children, and provide more support to those searching for their families — he says that, in his case, the ICBF took more than a year to respond and did nothing. And, above all, he wants Sweden to comply with the recommendations made in last year’s government report. “They need to end all international adoptions. They can’t guarantee that children will arrive here without irregularities.”

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