Mayura Janwalkar / DNA

Mumbai: Jennifer Haynes, 28, who was deported to India from USA owing to incomplete adoption formalities 20 years ago, will now have to seek US citizenship on humanitarian parole.

Humanitarian parole is often a "last chance" to gain entry to the US for individuals who are not otherwise eligible for a visa. The parole is valid for a maximum time limit of one year, although this time can be extended indefinitely while in the US.

"We are concerned about her two children more than anything else," justice Ranjana Desai of the Bombay high court said on Thursday.

Arguing on behalf of the union government and the central adoption regulation authority (Cara), additional solicitor general DJ Khambata told the court that Haynes lived in the US for 20 years and the American government could consider granting her citizenship on humanitarian grounds.

"We will give any certificate to consider on humanitarian grounds," Khambata said.

Haynes was deported to Mumbai in July 2008, as she did not gain American citizenship in spite of having been adopted by an American family and lived there for the past 20 years.

She filed a petition in court, seeking a passage back to the US and de-registration of the agency that processed her adoption.

"She was not advised properly. Those [adoptive] parents did not bother about her," justice Desai remarked. Haynes's advocate Pradeep Havnur told the court that her documents were confiscated by the immigration officers at the Chhatrapati Shivanji International Airport on her arrival last year.

The court has summoned the immigration officers with the seized documents to court on January 12. In the meantime, Haynes has been asked to make a humanitarian parole application to the US embassy.

Mayura Janwalkar

MUMBAI: Nearly 20 years after she was adopted by an American national, 27-year-old Jennifer Haynes is back in Mumbai, seeking action against the Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA), the agency that had processed her adoption papers. 
Speaking to DNA on Wednesday evening, Haynes said, "I was fighting with the immigration authorities in the US. They said that my documentation for US citizenship was unfinished and wanted to deport me. With the Indian government accepting my repatriation, I came back in July last year. Ever since, I have been living in a Chembur hostel."

In her petition, which was mentioned before Bombay High Court on Wednesday, Haynes has sought a court direction to Central Adoption Resources Authority (Cara) to deregister AIAA and other foreign agencies, based in the US and registered with the Indian Government, and stop inter-country adoption until she is sent back to her family.

"For all these years, nobody ever told me that I am not an American citizen. It is because of AIAA that I have landed in this situation," Haynes said. 
She has stated in the petition that her adoption process was carried out in violation of the UN Convention onthe Rights of the Child, 1989 and the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in Inter-Country Adoption.

Her advocate, Pradeep Havnur, said that the petition had been filed, but it was yet to get a date for hearing.

Born in India in 1981, Haynes was adopted by Edward Hancox, who flew her to the US in November 1989. It was the beginning of a nightmare for her. "I was sexually abused by my first foster father. I changed nearly 50 foster homes, but everywhere the abuse continued. Nobody was willing to accept me," she told DNA.

She married Justin Haynes in 2002 and lived with him and their two children -- Kadafi, 5 and Kanassa, 4 -- in Michigan. "My husband works in a construction company. I used to be a housewife. I talk to my family in Michigan only once in two weeks," said a frustrated Haynes. "I want to be back with my family. I am going crazy here."

Not having the necessary documents, she is finding it difficult to get a job in the city. "Now, I have no means to sustain myself. I am surviving on the money that my mother-in-law sends me," she added.

Mayura Janwalkar

Mumbai: Jennifer Haynes, 28, who was deported to India abruptly in 2008, finally traced her roots after over a year-long search. She met her brother, Christopher, 24, who lives in Ambernath. But in the reunion there was no drama, no emotion.

“I felt nothing. Nothing hurts anymore. I only think of my kids,” Haynes said.

Haynes, a mother of two, was adopted by US national George and Melissa Hancox in 1989. Haynes, however, claims she had a rough childhood in 50 different foster homes and suffered sexual abuse. She was deported by the US immigration authorities as her citizenship formalities were not completed at the time of her adoption.

“My brother visited me in Chembur with his wife and child. He’s a tailor and they’re very poor,” said a stoic Haynes. “We do look alike. He never went to school and grew up on the streets. He still calls me Pinky,” Haynes said. Arguing before the court on Monday, her advocate Pradeep Havnur said Haynes’s mother had left her in the care of Clarice D’souza of the now defunct Kuanyin Charitable Trust for a few days and D’souza without authorisation from Haynes’s parents had given her away in a foreign adoption.

“My mother died in 2006 but my father is in an alcoholic rehabilitation center. I met my aunt who told me that he took to alcohol after I was sent abroad without his knowledge,” Haynes said.

Seeking the de-registration of the Americans for International Aid and Adoption that processed her adoption, Havnur said Haynes’s should be treated as a state guest as she does not have accommodation or a job here.

Additional solicitor general DJ Khambata said, “I wish we could have done that for millions of Indians too.”

Khambata told the court that the government was willing to help Haynes seek a US citizenship on humanitarian grounds. Justice FI Rebello and justice Amjad Sayed have directed Haynes to apply to the US authorities on humanitarian grounds in two weeks.

Mayura Janwalkar

Mumbai: There seems to be no respite for Jennifer Haynes. The Central Adoption Resources Authority (Cara) filed an affidavit before the Bombay High Court on Wednesday, saying the US embassy does not have enough information on Haynes.

The 28-year-old was deported to Mumbai from the US in July 2008. "I make some money by teaching English to some children. But I need my documents to get a decent job," she said. Haynes is gradually coping with life in the city from where she was adopted almost 20 years ago.

Cara's deputy director Jagannath Pati said in the affidavit that the US embassy has said they have 'insufficient information to come to any sound conclusion' and it was 'attempting to locate Jennifer in Mumbai to discuss her situation'.

Speaking to DNA on Wednesday evening, Haynes, however, said nobody had contacted her. Her advocate Pradeep Havnur said nobody had tried to contact him either. Haynes was deported to Mumbai after the US authorities found some discrepancies in her citizenship documents.

DNA was the first to report Haynes's case against Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA) that had processed her adoption papers in 1989. In an email to Pati, the AIAA said Haynes was eight years old when she was adopted. Her first adoptive parents gave up guardianship because of her 'difficult behaviour in home and school'. Another email said the agency wanted to assure the high court that they did their duty to the maximum extent possible under Indian and US laws.

But advocate Jamshed Mistry who argued Haynes's case on Wednesday termed Cara's affidavit 'highly inconclusive'.

In a letter to Pati, the Indian Council of Social Welfare (ICSW) said Haynes could not be helped because its records were washed away in the deluge of July 26, 2006. "Our office in Chembur was completely submerged in water. All furniture, documents, and files were damaged," reads the ICSW letter.

The Bombay High Court on Monday reserved its order in an adoption ‘racket’ case where a 27-year-old woman was deported from the United States following alleged fraudulent adoption process.

Jennifer Haynes, a mother of two, who was adopted by American couple George and Melissa Hancox in July 1989, had moved the high court seeking action against the Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA) that had processed her adoption papers.

The Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) had last year filed a report stating that alleged fraudulent adoption process was carried out by an American agency (in her case).

The high court on Monday indicated that it is likely to dismiss Haynes’s petition seeking the de-registeration of the adoption agencies that sent her to the US in 1989 without, as alleged by her, following proper procedures.

Haynes was deported by the US immigration authorities as her citizenship formalities were not completed at the time of her adoption. She has claimed in her petition that she had a rough childhood in 50 different foster homes in the US and faced sexual abuse.

After hearing the arguments, Justice FI Rebello remarked, “The grievance now is not that of adoption but of citizenship.” The court had earlier directed Haynes to apply to the US embassy on the grounds of humanitarian parole. Additional solicitor general D J Khambata had said that the Centre would support her application. However, her advocate Pradeep Havnur told the court that without a high-level intervention Haynes’s application will not be considered. The court observed that as an adult Haynes had not applied for US citizenship and continued to live in the US as a child of her adoptive parents.

Haynes was convicted in a case of illegal possession of drugs in July 2004 and was under probation in prison. When her case reached the Board of Immigration, it was found that her citizenship formalities were incomplete at the time of her adoption in 1989 and they decided to deport her. She recently traced her brother in Ambarnath.

By: Swati Deshpande

MUMBAI: International adoptions hold a fascination for many adoption agencies across the country. For the child, it is an opportunity to get a
family's love. But in a rising number of cases, children given in for adoption abroad, are abandoned or forced to come back to India for other reasons. And when that happens, usually they have nothing to fall back on. To fill in this lacuna and to ensure a safety net for cross-border adoptions, the Bombay high court is for the first time suggesting the establishment of a National Children's Trust Fund for their rehabilitation.

Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud is in the process of finalising path-breaking guidelines on foreign adoptions and the steps that need to be taken to ensure the welfare of these children. On Friday, the judge at an in-chamber hearing in which Asha Bajpai of TISS and additional solicitor general Darius Khambatta are participating, the court considered shortlisting several key systemic changes to the procedure. The judge is of the view that children who are abandoned or forced to return to India cannot be left to chart their course through unknown territory and with no institutional help. In a radical proposal, it was suggested that $5,000 should be deposited by each foreign adopting parent/s before the adoption is finalised. The funds thus collected would then be used for supporting children who return to India.

In one case, that is still pending before the Bombay HC, Jennifer Haynes, now 27 and adopted 20 years ago by a US couple, was sent back on certain charges. She moved the high court, saying she has no identity left and nowhere to stay. In another case, a 14-year-old girl also adopted by a US family is now back after she developed psychiatric problems. The question is who would fund her treatment-Wide Horizons for Children (WHC), the adoption agency that had placed her for adoption and then flew her back in 2008 September or Indian government's Central Adoption Resources Agency which gave the permission to bring her back or the Indian Council for Social Welfare (ICSW) under whose care she is now. The Indian council wants the adoptee parents and the WHC to pay for the medical treatment.

The HC has said that proper psychiatric evaluation prior to such international adoptions is also a must.

Advocate Jamshed Mistry, who has dealt with several cases of issues cropping in foreign adoptions, said that what needs to be done immediately is to ensure that records of foreign adoptions must be scrupulously kept by the agency that facilitated it for the 60-year period as mandated by the Hague Convention to which India is a signatory. But the practice is sometimes not followed. On adoption by a foreign national, the process of naturalisation of the child ought to begin immediately.

Mayura Janwalkar / DNA

Mumbai: Jennifer Haynes, 28, who was abruptly deported to India from USA in July 2008, has lashed out at an affidavit filed by Central Adoption Resources Authority's (Cara) deputy director Jagannath Pati.

Calling the affidavit filed by Pati "evasive", Haynes has stated that the Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA) and Clarice D'souza of the Kuan Yin Trust in Mumbai have failed to abide by their undertaking given to the court about her relocation to the USA. She has urged the court to initiate suo-motto contempt proceedings against both the agencies.

Haynes had moved the court after her brusque deportation to India owing to incomplete documentation during her adoption twenty years back. Pati, in his affidavit filed last month, claimed that the US embassy has stated that they have "insufficient information to come to any conclusion" and it is "attempting to locate Jennifer in Mumbai to discuss her situation." Cara, too, has washed its hands off saying that they came into existence only in 1990 while Haynes was adopted in 1989. "Saying that they did not exist at the time of the adoption is no answer to the apathy that Jennifer has been subjected to," said Haynes's advocate Pradeep Havnur.

Haynes was deported on July 2, 2008 and is put up at a shelter home in Chembur since then. Haynes, in her rejoinder to the Cara's affidavit, has stated that the US Embassy's claim of trying to "locate" her in Mumbai shows its "casual approach". The Cara is well aware of her whereabouts and can easily inform the embassy of her address. Havnur however, said, "After the last hearing on July 8, the US embassy officials have made attempts to contact Jennifer but have not yet spoken to her."

Haynes has also said that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) should bear the expenses of her stay in India as it their "unlawful and unfair" approach that led to her deportation. "The MEA without ascertaining the status of the petitioner (Haynes), has without mind, much less its application, acted mechanically by issuing travel documents to US Authorities allowing the petitioner to enter into India, which would not have been done, had the MEA acted diligently and not through telephonic conversations," Haynes's affidavit states. The court will hear Haynes's case further on July 29.

Mayura Janwalkar

Mumbai: The Bombay high court questioned the central government over the investigations made in Jennifer Haynes's case and asked the government counsel why they should not be responsible to provide shelter for Haynes.

A year after she was deported to Mumbai from USA owing to incomplete adoption formalities 20 years back, Haynes, 28, told the court that having lived away from her two young children, her marriage too is in troubled waters.

Speaking to justice Ranjana Desai and justice Mridula Bhatkar on Wednesday, Haynes broke down at the mention of her children, Kadafi, 5, and Kanassa, 4.

Haynes's lawyer Pradeep Havnur told the court that Haynes was convicted in a case of illegal possession of drugs in July 2004 and was under probation in prison. When her case reached the Board of Immigration, it was found that her citizenship formalities were incomplete at the time of her adoption in 1989. The board then decided to deport her.
Taking a serious note of the matter, justice Desai said, "The charges she is facing are in America," adding that things like these happen due to poverty and unemployment. "You cannot separate a mother from her children in this manner," she said.

Haynes has been living at a shelter home in Chembur since July last year. When the court enquired about her accommodation, Haynes said that the home that she lives in is temporary. The court called for additional solicitor general DJ Khambata to clarify the government's position in the case and adjourned the case till November 30.