Thread: Texas couple arrested in Mexico for illegally taking Mexican

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4593594.html
March 1, 2007, 12:52PM
Texas couple arrested in Mexico for illegally taking Mexican baby


© 2007 The Associated Press

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MONTERREY, Mexico — A Texas couple were arrested in Monterrey after inquiring about a visa at the U.S. Consulate here for a 2-week-old baby boy they said was given to them, police said Thursday.

Sergio Velez, 42, and Tomasa Ibarra, 39, of San Antonio were arrested outside the U.S. Consulate late Wednesday, Monterrey police said in a news release.

Velez, a U.S. citizen, and Ibarra, a legal U.S. resident, told police a 21-year-old woman they met in the northern state of San Luis Potosi, where Ibarra is from, offered them the baby in December.

The couple were being detained and face charges of trying to buy or rob a child, said Epifanio Vasquez, a spokesman for Monterrey police.

The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey did not respond immediately to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

The couple told police the baby's mother gave them the baby because she was too poor to care for him. They said they paid for the woman's expenses during childbirth but denied buying the baby boy.

"(The mother) didn't ask us for money," Velez told the newspaper El Norte. "She just wanted money for the child's birth because she didn't have any."

The couple told police they had traveled to Monterrey a year ago to try to adopt a child but were rejected because they were living in the United States. They said they hadn't tried to adopt in Texas because it is too expensive.

"We thought it would be easy to do it this way, but we didn't do it in bad faith," Ibarra told El Norte. "We wanted to do it the right way, that's why we came to ask."

The baby boy is in the care of child welfare authorities in Monterrey, police said.


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hMMMM! Wonder if the U.S. Consulate called the fuzz there in Mexico? Another U.S. citizen bites the dust for dear old Mexico. NOW... regardless,if the couple broke the law then....!!

If they had gotten the baby here in the US the messican consulate would be demanding they be allowed to "adopt" the little bambino so he would not have to grow up in poverty in his native messico.

Something tells me that this little bundle of joy was intended for a third home.