Accused baby broker formally charged

REYNOSA - A man accused of buying babies from Mexico and selling them to adoptive couples in the United States was formally charged with child trafficking Tuesday.

Tamaulipas state Judge Hiram Mascorro Garcia ruled he found probable cause to hold Amado Torres Vega, 64, despite the Harlingen man's insistence that his work was legal.

"Up to now, we know that there was at least one mother who received a sufficient (monetary) benefit and a man who gave that benefit," Mascorro said in Spanish after Tuesday's hearing.

Torres' girlfriend, Maria Isabel Hernandez, 25, and one of the mothers accused of selling her child to Torres - Rosalinda Reyna Pulido - were also charged with child trafficking.

Investigators believe Hernandez helped Torres locate poor Mexican women like Reyna who were interested in selling their children.

Tamaulipas state police arrested Torres and Hernandez on May 26 after Reyna's mother reported them, angry that her daughter had sold her child to the couple. Torres later confessed to similarly buying more than a dozen children over the last decade, according to a criminal complaint filed in his case.

But last week during a jailhouse interview with The Monitor, he maintained that he had simply been taking care of Reyna's child while she was incarcerated on unrelated theft charges. He said he had worked with a Harlingen attorney and a San Antonio-based adoption agency on the other cases.

"We have several individual cases," Judge Mascorro said. "So we need to see what evidence there is for each."

After their closed-court hearing, Torres and Hernandez were taken to a Tamaulipas state jail outside Reynosa. Reyna was already held there on the theft charges filed before she allegedly sold her child.

If convicted, each of the three could face six to 12 years in a Mexican prison.

The trio's court-appointed attorney, Victoriano Alvarez Rojas, could not be reached for comment.

____

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