{"id":22012,"date":"2019-10-10T13:42:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T17:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22012"},"modified":"2019-10-10T13:42:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T17:42:05","slug":"adoption-fraud-human-trafficking-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/10\/10\/adoption-fraud-human-trafficking-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Official Indicted in Human Trafficking Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On his law firm\u2019s website, Paul D. Petersen boasts<\/a> that in addition to having 15 years of experience as an adoption attorney, he has \u201ca unique insight and passion in assisting Marshallese birth families with their adoption plans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Petersen failed to disclose is that he actually was engaged in human smuggling, according to a 32-count indictment announced<\/a> by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petersen, who also serves as Maricopa County (Arizona)\nAssessor, and his co-defendant Lynwood Jennet would recruit, pay, and transport\nexpectant mothers from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. for the purpose of\ngiving birth and then having them adopted by American families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through his adoption agency, Petersen is accused of arranging for at least 29 adoptions in Arizona alone between November 2015 and May 2019. But it did not end in Arizona. Petersen faces similar charges in Utah<\/a>, where he brought as many as 40 Marshallese women over three years and in Arkansas, where officials characterized the scheme in the severest terms possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMake no mistake, this is the purest form of human trafficking,\u201d said Duane Kees, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas during a news conference<\/a> detailing the charges included in a 19-count indictment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also a pure money-making scheme that Petersen\nused for his personal benefit. By charging families between $25,000 and $40,000\nper adoption, it is estimated he raked in about $2.7 million in less than two\nyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arrested on Tuesday night, he also faces charges for allegedly committing fraud in Arizona by getting the Marshallese women coverage under state-funded healthcare in order to pay for delivery costs, which amounted to more than $814,000. During one of the multi-state raids, eight more pregnant mothers<\/a> were found in one of the houses used for them until they gave birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Petersen case may be extraordinary, but adoption\nof Marshallese babies is not, even though they run afoul of the Marshall\nIslands Adoption Act of 2002, which makes it illegal to use financial\nincentives to solicit an adoption. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was partly a response to a trend in the 1990s when pregnant Marshallese women were being flown to Hawaii to give birth. Reform of Hawaii\u2019s state law, however, did not end the practice so much as it shifted to states with looser laws, like Arkansas, according to an article in the Wilson Quarterly<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, one circuit court judge told Arkansas Public Media<\/a> that 99 percent of the adoption consent cases he\u2019s heard in recent years involve Marshallese children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere in northwest Arkansas it\u2019s clear that most of\nthe birth mothers are doing it out of financial need,\u201d said Washington County\nCircuit Court Judge Doug Martin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If law enforcement and legislators want to prevent another Petersen from exploiting the law and children in the future, then they need to hand down a tough sentence and they need to tighten up adoption laws which provide traffickers the room they require to commit their crimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his law firm\u2019s website, Paul D. Petersen boasts that in addition to having 15 years of experience as an adoption attorney, he has \u201ca unique insight and passion in assisting Marshallese birth families with their adoption plans.\u201d What Petersen failed to disclose is that he actually was engaged in human smuggling, according to a<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":12097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[6773,35,1524,1120],"yst_prominent_words":[2109,6767,4589,6771,2257,2365,3528,4919,6765,2071,6768,4430,2435,6772,2030,6770,6766,1959,6769,1957],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22013,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22012\/revisions\/22013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22012"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}