[Guadalajara, Jal. November 16, 2020] There are currently an estimated 35,000 to 75,000 intercountry adoptees who do not have U. S. citizenship. 

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 made it possible for many foreign-born children to gain automatic citizenship. However, it did not cover adoptees who were 18 or older at that time and already in the United States, leaving thousands in limbo. An unknown number of adult American adoptees have already been deported as a result of this loophole and have endured multiple traumas due to our flawed adoption system.

As children, they were abandoned in their home countries, then brought to the United States, and later abandoned again. After their deportation, they are sent to a country where they have no family or cultural ties. In their first home countries, they can be denied legal status as a result of their American adoptions, leaving them stateless as a direct result of institutional failures to protect them.

The Rhizome Center for Migrants defends the right of U.S. citizens to keep their families intact. Today, the organization joins a coalition of more than 180 organizations to correct failures in our adoption system and end all future deportations of foreign adoptees of American citizens. 

Read our letter to House leadership here.