Messenger: Broken immigration system leaves Missouri family separated from their son
Tony's Take
Messenger: Broken immigration system leaves Missouri family separated from their son
The Trower family — from left, Adam, Nora and Jill — hold a photo of Luke, the son and brother who was adopted more than four years ago from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the adoption, Luke has been in limbo, stuck in Africa because of red tape surrounding international adoptions.
Becky Orf, Orf Photography
This is a story of love and brokenness.
The love is between two Missouri parents and the son they are trying to adopt from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
What’s broken is the American immigration system that keeps them apart.
Adam Trower is a banker in Bowling Green. His wife, Jill, is a second grade teacher in Vandalia. They live on a farm in rural Curryville about halfway between the two northeast Missouri towns where they work. When their daughter, Nora, was about 7, they decided to complete their family. They couldn’t have any more children of their own, so they went about adopting Luke.
He was 6 months old at the time, living in an orphanage in Congo. Luke had been found abandoned near a dumpster in Kinshasa, taken to the police station, and eventually he was referred to an orphanage.
The Trowers have a friend who volunteers for a nonprofit called the Libota Project that raises money for children in orphanages in Congo, where years of violence, famine and government corruption have left millions of children on the streets.
In October 2018, the Trowers submitted the proper form, called an I-600A, to the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Service, or USCIS, to seek approval as an appropriate family to adopt a child in a foreign orphanage. In a month, the application was approved. The Trowers then started the adoption process in Congo. That included an investigation to determine that Luke wasn’t being trafficked, that he was legitimately abandoned. In May 2019, a judge in Congo issued the adoption papers.
This is where love turns to brokenness.
In this week’s Chat Room, Post-Dispatch columnists Tony Messenger and Aisha Sultan discuss the need to attract more immigrants to St. Louis.
In order for an American family to unite with their adopted child, the USCIS forwards the application to the Department of State, which conducts its own inquiry. Congo isn’t one of the countries that has signed on to the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children, which makes adoptions in that country more difficult.
“That’s where this case started to fall off the rails,” says David Gearhart, an attorney with Lewis Rice, whom the Trowers’ hired after the delays began. “The embassy in Congo had the investigation paperwork for six months and nothing had been done.”
That was before the pandemic hit, which, of course, slowed matters further.
For months, the Trowers and Gearhart could get no answers. USCIS blamed State; State blamed USCIS. Luke was stuck in the orphanage. He Facetimed with his new parents, who sent money to help feed and clothe him. He speaks Lingala and French, so the conversations are stilted.
The offices of U.S. Sens. Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley wrote letters and made calls on the Trowers’ behalf, but they couldn’t get answers either. Until January this year. That’s when the family received a notice of intent to deny their adoption from the USCIS. It wasn’t an actual denial, just an indication that one was coming.
They were dumbfounded. The State Department investigation didn’t even interview the orphanage nor the judge who approved the adoption. Gearhart filed an immediate response with detailed background of Luke’s past. The judge in the case issued a harsh condemnation of the U.S. government’s failure to understand Congo law. Nine months later, the adoption application is still pending, and the Trowers have received no answers.
“The process is broken,” Adam Trower says. “It’s frustrating when it feels like the government has turned its back on us. There are moments when we feel like we have hope, but then nothing ever changes.”
One of those moments of hope came in May, as the Senate was working through the confirmation of Ur Mendoza Jaddou as the new director of USCIS. During a hearing, Hawley (who would eventually vote no on her appointment), asked Jaddou to commit that “USCIS will fully and fairly consider the merits of the Trower family’s petition and provide a decision as soon as possible.”
Yes, she said.
She was confirmed July 30.
The Trowers still haven’t heard anything. They’re preparing a lawsuit against USCIS to force an answer.
“Here this family is three years into it; and we still know nothing,” Gearhart says. “It just tears them apart. It’s just heartbreaking.”
They aren’t giving up. In fact, despite all the difficulties, and no guarantee that they will ever unite with Luke, they wouldn’t do anything differently.
“Knowing everything I know now, I would still do this again,” says Jill Trower. “He deserves a chance of having a family. We want our son home.”
In this week’s Chat Room, Post-Dispatch columnists Tony Messenger and Aisha Sultan discuss the need to attract more immigrants to St. Louis.