11 hours ago
1
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Up to 200,000 people adopted as children from abroad are vulnerable to deportation by an administration searching for problems with their citizenship.
March 23, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET
Born in Guatemala and adopted as an infant by a Minnesota couple, Tiko’ Rujux-Xicay scarcely considers himself an immigrant, much less a vulnerable one. But after federal immigration agents arrested some of his neighbors in January, he began carrying his American passport and encouraging other adoptees to do the same.
That is how Mr. Rujux-Xicay, 27, (pronounced ruh-OOSH she-KYE) learned that faulty laws and practices surrounding international adoption had left many adoptees trying to prove they have a legal right to live in the only nation most of them have ever known. As many as 200,000 adoptees are vulnerable to deportation because they lack U.S. citizenship or important proof of it, immigration lawyers say.
The problem is decades old, but has taken on new urgency during the Trump administration’s determination to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Immigration lawyers say they know of no accurate count of how many international adoptees have been deported, but say they are increasingly being detained.
“Most immigrants know from the very beginning what they have to do to gain legal status, but many adoptees have never questioned whether or not they have it, until now,” said Mónica Dooner Lindgren, a family law attorney at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services in St. Paul. Many international adoptees first learn they are not citizens when they apply for a drivers license, join the military or, these days, when federal agents stop them on the street.
Beginning with war orphans and refugees in the 1940s, Americans have adopted more than 500,000 children from abroad, more than any other nation. The practice peaked in 2004, and has since slowed dramatically as Russia, China, Guatemala and other countries have halted foreign adoptions because of evidence of corruption and other irregularities.
At the height of the international adoption boom, shifting requirements and corruption often made the process chaotic. Children who were adopted legally obtained new birth certificates with their adoptive parents’ names, but federal law also required that the children become naturalized citizens. Thousands of parents were either unaware of or did not take this step, which made their adopted children potentially subject to removal.
