Harlingen baby broker sentenced to nine years in Mexican prison

By JEREMY ROEBUCK, The Monitor

REYNOSA — A former Harlingen missionary accused of buying babies from poor Mexican women for adoptive couples in the United States has been sentenced to nine years in prison, a Tamaulipas state judge said Tuesday.

Amado "Billy" Torres, 65, was convicted on child trafficking charges Jan. 29, nearly two years after Tamaulipas state police arrested him during a purchase from an inmate at a Reynosa women’s prison.

"He is an intermediary," Judge Jose Luis Tobías Bazan, who handled Torres’ case, said in Spanish. "He was the one who looked for the mothers and convinced them (to give up their children). He was the one in between the mothers and the people in the United States."

PRICE OF A CHILD

Mexican state prosecutors alleged Torres and his girlfriend — 26-year-old Maria Isabel Hernandez — made their living recruiting young pregnant women from the Rio Bravo area to cross the border illegally, have their children in the United States and give them up to parents wanting to adopt from as far away as Michigan and Tennessee.

Many came from impoverished families and struggled with addiction to alcohol and drugs, but others held down jobs in Reynosa’s maquiladoras.

While it is not unusual for adoption agencies in the U.S. to pay for prenatal care for women looking to give up their children, many of those working with Torres told investigators they spent the $2,500 to $3,000 they received for each child on themselves.

One woman said she paid for renovations to her home with the money she made after giving Torres her child, according to court documents.

Others claimed more desperate motives.

A 39-year-old who carried three children to term for Torres told investigators she continued to get pregnant to pay the medical bills for her 9-year-old daughter suffering from bone marrow cancer, prosecutors said.

Another — a 21-year-old suffering from AIDS — said she also got pregnant and sold a child to pay for her own care.

And some insisted they never meant to give up their children at all.

Claudia Pantoja Ramirez, 30, told state prosecutors Torres smuggled her into the United States to have her child. But upon giving birth, she asked him if she could back out of their deal.

A day later, she woke up to find her baby gone and $3,000 from Torres.

She and two other mothers were also sentenced last month to six years in prison for cooperating with Torres, Tobías said. Hernandez received a nine-year sentence for her involvement in the scheme.

A QUESTION OF MOTIVE

U.S. authorities — including agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Cameron County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI — opened investigations into Torres’ activities, but all closed their cases after his arrest in Mexico on May 26, 2008.

Torres never denied his vocation or that he helped smuggle women into the United States illegally, but he challenged Mexican authorities’ characterization of his motives.

The week of his arrest, he maintained in a jailhouse interview with The Monitor that he worked to save the children from likely abortions or dismal lives with mothers unequipped to handle the responsibilities of child rearing.

"These women were irresponsible," he said. "What were their options? Abortion? I did what I could to give their children a better life."

Prior to his arrest, Torres had traveled the world for 35 years doing missionary work with a group called Organization Mobilization. In the ’80s, he launched a campaign to built 80 houses on his property in Harlingen that were later shipped across the border to replace homes destroyed by Hurricane Gilbert.

And for his brother Richard Torres — who moved from the Los Angeles area to Harlingen in 2008 to help with his brother’s defense — that record speaks volumes.

Still reeling from his brother’s conviction, he said Tuesday that he hopes to get the sentence overturned in a Mexican appeals’ court.

"This man should be given a medal instead," he said. "These kids didn't have a voice."

(Monitor staff writer Martha Leticia Hernandez contributed to this report.)