Accused baby broker denies wrongdoing

Jeremy Roebuck

REYNOSA -- Amado Torres Vega insists he could never put a price on human life.

Mexican authorities, however, allege the 64-year-old Harlingen man did exactly that.

Three days after his arrest on child trafficking charges, Torres denied allegations he bought children from poor Mexican women and sold them to adoptive couples in the United States.

"A child is not an object - not a car," he said Thursday during a Monitor interview at the Reynosa Police Department. "We're dealing with lives and feelings. We're dealing with a child's future."

But his remarks during that interview contradict court documents that say he confessed to purchasing more than a dozen children over a 10-year period in Rio Bravo, Tamps., across the U.S.-Mexico border from Donna.

Statements obtained from nine mothers who allegedly took money from Torres also implicate him as a well-known baby broker in the area, according to a criminal complaint filed in his case.

RIO BRAVO'S BABY BROKER

Tamaulipas state police charged Torres on Monday, after an upset grandmother accused him of buying her granddaughter for $2,500. She told investigators he purchased the child from its mother, who was incarcerated on theft charges.

Since then, authorities have linked Torres to 15 similar transactions.

In many cases, he helped smuggle pregnant women into the United States so their children could be born as U.S. citizens, making them more easily adoptable by parents in Michigan and Tennessee, said Raul Gamez, a Tamaulipas state police investigator.

For some of the mothers, working with Torres provided another source of income, according to court documents. One woman - a 39-year-old mother from Rio Bravo - said she sold three children to Torres to pay for medical care for a 9-year-old daughter suffering from bone marrow cancer.

Another said that "she sold her newborn for the amount of $3,000 and she knew there were more people from Rio Bravo who sold their children to Torres," according to court documents translated from Spanish.

‘A BETTER LIFE'

But a haggard-looking Torres insisted Thursday that all of his efforts to help the women were legitimate.

For years, he worked with Harlingen lawyer Armando Escamilla and the San Antonio-based agency Adoption Alliance to set up legally sanctioned adoptions, he said. And any money that may have changed hands came from adoptive parents looking to ensure prenatal care for the child.

"If you shake me twice, you'll find that no money comes out," Torres said. "I wasn't making a dime off of this."

Escamilla has repeatedly refused to answer questions about his relationship with Torres.

Employees at the Adoption Alliance reported they had never heard of him, but said it is not unusual for adoptive parents to pay some of the medical costs associated with carrying a child.

However, those costs would not include payments to coyotes, or immigrant smugglers, to help sneak women into the United States, they said.

"If they needed money for things, I would give it to them," Torres said. "If they said they needed to pay someone to take them across (the Rio Grande), then I would loan it."

The FBI continues to investigate whether any U.S. organizations who worked with Torres knew how the children were obtained.

As of Thursday afternoon, Torres and his girlfriend - Maria Isabel Hernandez, 25 - remained in the Reynosa Municipal Jail. She also faces child trafficking charges for allegedly introducing Torres to women willing to sell their children.

If convicted, they each could face up to 12 years in a Mexican prison.

But as guards led Torres back to a jail cell Thursday, he lowered his head and said he would always stand by his work.

"These women were irresponsible," he said. "What are their options? Abortion?

"I did what I could to give their children a better life."

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.