Transcript

Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/147

Haley Radke: [00:00:00] You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. This is Episode 147, Anissa. I'm your host, Haley Radke.

Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Today's show is a very important one. We are talking about the issue of adoptees without citizenship today. And if you've listened to Adoptees On for any length of time, you know this is an issue that's been happening for years and years and has just really been called into attention in the last few years.

And so today I am so excited to welcome Adoptees for Justice to the show. We are gonna hear from the executive director and he's gonna teach us a little bit more about this issue. And then we are gonna hear from Anissa, an adoptee who has been deported, and we are gonna hear her full story. [00:01:00] And I encourage you to listen to the whole show because it will have an impact on you.

You can't listen and it not have an impact on you. And we are gonna wrap up and hear how you and I today can make an impact for adoptees who have been affected by not having citizenship. Now, I need to give you some content warnings. This is gonna be a challenging episode to listen to. We talk about sexual abuse.

There is mention and descriptions of domestic violence, and we also talk about suicide a few times. And so if any of those topics are really activating for you or triggering for you, please skip this episode. Make sure you're listening in a safe headspace because we really go there and talk about some really hard things today.

So with all that being [00:02:00] said, I'm really pleased that we are able to tackle this conversation and bring it to light and I challenge you to do the things that are recommended to us at the end. Because if one of us is suffering, aren't we all? I'm really honored that I'm able to bring you this story today and it's representative of many.

Well, let's listen in.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Kristopher Larson, the Executive Director of Adoptees for Justice. Welcome, Kristopher.

Kristopher Larsen: Hi. Thank you for having me on.

Haley Radke: I'm really excited to talk to you today because there is some really important work that your organization is doing, and I'd love to give you a chance to just kind of talk a little bit about what Adoptees for Justice is doing and why it was created and just the issues that you guys are dealing with right now.

Kristopher Larsen: Yeah, so Adoptees for Justice [00:03:00] officially started in November, 2018. A lot of us that are part of the organization have been part of other organizations doing the citizenship work for adoptees. And when I talk about citizenship work for adoptees, that basically means intercountry adoptees that were adopted by US families, but for some reason didn't receive US citizenship.

As we know, the 2000 Child Citizenship Act granted automatic citizenship for those individuals that were adopted and that came in on IR-3 visas, which meant that the adoption was finalized in the home country. Those that came over on IR-4 visas into the US received automatic permanent residency, but would qualify for automatic citizenship once their adoption was finalized before they were 18 in the US.

Now, one of the things with that law is that it actually excludes anybody that has been [00:04:00] adopted but did not get adopted coming in on an adoption visa, I guess you could call it, because there's only two specific types of visas geared towards adoption. And that's the IR-3 and IR-4. And they also have an iteration of the H version.

In other words, if they were part of the Hague Adoption Convention. But we have people that came in on student visas, which is a non-immigrating visa. They would not qualify. We had people that come in on humanitarian visas. Those do not qualify because none of those are adoption visas that are specific to the IR-3s and IR-4s.

So one of the things that we wanted to do is go back and change that law so that it granted all intercountry adoptees a right to citizenship and this is a right that they should have when they're a child and when that adoption is finalized. One of the issues that we face, like I said, is that we also have individuals that have been deported.

Some have been deported of crime and some have been deported because there [00:05:00] is a simple little mistake on their paperwork. And it's a sad fact but these are the individuals that had actually received citizenship, but got it taken away because of a paperwork issue.

Haley Radke: So how many adoptees would you say are affected by this?

Kristopher Larsen: So one of the issues is that there's no accurate data out there. But we do have some data from the Korean government because they require adoption agencies to report back on the kids that have received citizenship. And so the Korean government has about 18,000 individuals that they cannot verify.

So it's possible that they don't have citizenship. But then when that's only one country, when we look at all the countries, it's estimated about 55,000 individuals did not receive citizenship through this.

Haley Radke: So you were talking about there's adoptees who could have had a mistake in their paperwork and so the citizenship wasn't like [00:06:00] officially rubber-stamped and got deported, and also adoptees who might have committed a crime of some kind and they were deported.

How many are we talking about here? Like how big is this issue?

Kristopher Larsen: So we have been able to verify about 50 deportees. A couple have already passed away because of certain situations where they're at. Here in the US, and that's the other thing that is not kept accurate. When somebody is deported, there is no checkbox that said, were you an adoptee? So it's extremely difficult.

Haley Radke: And so we're talking about people that were born in a different country, adopted to the US, and deported back to a country that they have no connection with except that they were born there.

Kristopher Larsen: Yes. And the thing is we also have to remember that these are individuals that were adopted by US citizen families. [00:07:00] They're also adoptees that came in on valid visas. So everything was there except for the automatic portion of citizenship.

And you have to understand that even though the individuals came here as children, they will lose any knowledge basically of where they were born, their culture, ethnicity, language, for instance. And the thing is a majority of the people that are adopted are adopted into, I guess you could say, Christian White families.

If you look at my case, I was adopted into a phenomenal family. It couldn't have gotten any better. All my family are blonde-haired, blue-eyed Norwegians. And so I kind of stuck out like a sore thumb everywhere we went. But I always tried to fit in, it was to a point to where I kind of denied that I was even Asian because I didn't wanna be Asian. [00:08:00]

I wanted to be the white kid. I wanted to be their child. And so even though I came to the US and didn't speak English as a child, I soon learned to forget my native language. And so that's all I speak now is English. I currently have an order for deportation because of an issue in the paperwork that was done by INS at the time. And, and they have verified that. But the fact that if I'm deported to Vietnam, I don't know the language, I don't know the culture, and I definitely don't look like a Vietnamese person. So it's very hard to assimilate.

Haley Radke: One case I know of is an adoptee that was deported and later died by suicide because of the immense impact this had on him. I mean, I just picture, you know, talking to listeners, just picture yourself getting dropped off in this country that you were born in. That's the only known connection. It's just horrendous. [00:09:00]

Kristopher Larsen: Yeah. That's an extremely difficult thing to deal with because I work with a lot of the deportees right now, and I don't think there has ever been a time where somebody hasn't talked about suicide, and it's really tough because, like I said, they're in a country that they don't get services from.

There is no service for somebody that's been deported, especially somebody that doesn't speak the language. It's difficult for them to even get work papers to be able to work. The citizens of those countries don't view them, the adoptee, as a citizen because they view them as being American.

Haley Radke: And are they technically a citizen of the other country or are they without a country?

Kristopher Larsen: That depends. South Korea has been giving citizenship back to adoptees but, for instance, we have a deportee in Panama where they don't, they are citizenship-less [00:10:00] because they're not considered a citizen of Panama.

Same with people from Ethiopia or Costa Rica. So it makes it very difficult.

Haley Radke: Shocking. Okay. Well we're gonna pause there and we're going to hear from an adoptee that this has impacted, and then we're gonna come back with Kristopher and he's gonna tell us a little bit more about how you can get involved and what you can do to help fix this massive issue.

I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Anissa Druesedow. Welcome, Anissa.

Anissa: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Haley Radke: My honor. I'm hopeful our internet connection is gonna keep up with us. Fingers crossed, toes crossed, note for the audio. We're doing that. But I would love it if you would start the way we always do. And would you share some of your story with us?

Anissa: Absolutely. I, as you stated, my name is Anissa. I was born in Jamaica. [00:11:00] And I was raised by my maternal grandmother until she passed away from uterine cancer. So after that, my biological mother moved my sister and myself here to Panama, central America, because my grandfather is a Jamaican, and he came over to work on the canal when the canal was being built way, way, way back then.

He was, I think, one of the only, or a few, a handful of black tugboat drivers that worked in the canal as a tugboat driver. So my biological mother was born here in Panama, and I was born in Jamaica when she was there for a period of time. According to her now, she said that my grandmother wanted to go back to Jamaica to die.

She didn't wanna have a hysterectomy 'cause she said she wouldn't be a woman. So that was the mentality back then. And so they went to [00:12:00] Jamaica. My sister and I were born there. And then after my grandmother passed, I'm not sure about the ages and things like that because I didn't know my birthday until after my adoption.

So all of that is really fuzzy. So I would say at five, six, my biological mother then brought us from Jamaica to Panama. She liked to party, liked to do drugs. At that point in time, the military base was here and, you know, it was party everywhere. So she fell in love with a soldier, an American soldier.

And she left and went to the United States and she left us with my grandfather. He had a lover and she had two male sons for my grandfather, and she had another one that wasn't my grandfather, but she left us then with this woman and these three men where we stayed and soon after that they started sexually [00:13:00] molesting my sister and I.

So then I told my grandfather, and, you know, back then it wasn't a popular thing to even speak or think about. So he beat me not believing that one of his sons and all three of them were sexually molesting us. So we were placed in an orphanage. And my biological mother, Beverly, we'll call her that from here on out, was in the US and, you know, she was living her life.

And we were in an orphanage. So we were there. I am not sure if it's for four or five years that we were in the orphanage, but it was long, but not long compared to, you know, a lifetime, I guess. And we had always had a lot of US military support bringing us food and things like that. And also, they would take us out for weekends and take us for holidays.

[00:14:00] A lot of times we got taken to families’ homes to spend, you know, whatever holiday it was with them. So I was in school once and I came home, and my sister was gone, and I was like, Where is my sister? And they said, oh, she went out with a family there. Before this, there was a black family that wanted to adopt us, but my family is black and they thought that we would do better with a white family.

So they didn't allow the adoption to go through. And so this was a white family and they thought that we would be better suited in a white family because of our complexion. And then, you know, they started doing the process. They found out she had a sister and they didn't wanna split up the sister.

So they were like, okay, we'll take the sister too. My father was a sergeant major in the Army. And we lived at a base called Fort Clayton. [00:15:00] It was the best thing that ever happened. You know, we had food, we didn't have lice or parasites. And, you know, when you're adopted at nine, 10, you remember it.

So you remember the bad and you can appreciate the good. So it was something that was very, very, very good. I had, you know, American siblings and when the Americans would come to the orphanage, they would always have nice cars. They always brought food. So you think they're rich. So I wanna go to America where everybody is rich.

And so that dream came true. We were picked up and taken home. We had water, hot water, air conditioner, which we never had before. So it was all like, just wonderful. I tried to fit in as much as I could with my sister that's a year older than me. I wanted to be as American as she was. And you know, we just started living as a normal family.

[00:16:00] A couple years after that, of course, we struggled with the education and the school and the language and everything like that.

Haley Radke: Was that in the States or was this still in Panama on the base.

Anissa: This was still in Panama on the military base.

Haley Radke: Okay.

Anissa: Yeah, because the military base had their schools and they had everything. It was just like a little American city stuck in a third-world country. So then my father got his military orders for us to go back to the US. And I didn't understand how that was all gonna happen, but people showed up.

You know, my mom, she is a very organized, very on top of everything kind of person. She packed everything up. We got boxes, you know, we packed everything up and they came and picked up the boxes, and we then went to a guest house to stay the rest of the time. Our household goods left first, and then we went to a guest house.

It was like staying in a hotel. It was wonderful. [00:17:00] And then we went to the airport and flew backwards all the way to the US. I remember we had a Barbie and I lost the Barbie’s shoe on the plane. And that was my big memory of going to the US. And so we got to the US, we landed in, I believe, South Carolina. I knew none of this before all of this happened.

I mean, I had to get all my records and everything for me to be able to try to get the help that I'm trying to get now. So we landed in South Carolina. We stayed in North Carolina at my parents' military friend's house for a while, and then we went to Indiana and my parents are originally from Indiana, Roanoke, and from Fort Worth.

So we were there, we got to meet our extended family and we had an uncle that had a dairy farm and I [00:18:00] remember the cows, the cats, and I just loved my Uncle Bobby and that life and the country. You know, just everything so open and free and you're not fearful of anything. You know, you can be a kid.

So that was my huge memory from that time. So then my dad got orders to be stationed at Seneca Army Depot, that's upstate New York in Romulus, New York. And we started going to school where I'm in the central school. Everybody was just living their life. I was playing gym one day in gym class and a classmate of mine kicked the ball.

So I jumped up and I caught the ball and when I came down, my leg gave out and I fell. So then after that I was limping 'cause it kind of felt weaker. And so I limped and, when I got home, I told my parents what had happened. And we just had a small clinic on the Seneca Army Depot. [00:19:00] So they took us there, they did x-rays and everything like that.

And they said, oh, it's just a pulled muscle, you know, it's just calcium deposits. And then they kept saying like little things like that. I did therapy for probably like three to four months, but because I'm adopted, we didn't know my family history, medical history. With 20/20 hindsight in 2020: my biological family is infested, cancer is like something that everybody dies from, and we didn't know it back then.

So, for the last X-ray that was done there was a military X-ray tech. I had a crush on him, that's how I remember these details. And he looked at my parents and he said something is very wrong here. And you know, this is 1984-85, somewhere around there. So we didn't have the technology [00:20:00] and he said, something is very wrong here.

Something else has to be going on because my calf, instead of getting better, it got bigger. So they sent us about 1-2 hours away to get a CAT scan. And once I got the CAT scan, they said it was cancer and they needed to do a biopsy. So when we drove back to the town where we lived, the Seneca Army Depot medical coordinator, or I don't know, you know, I don't know. Those parts were handled by my parents. It was cancer and it was pretty aggressive for the time it had grown. So that night I had to go to Geneva General Hospital to be admitted and for a biopsy to happen the following morning.

So we went in for the biopsy. They confirmed that it was cancer. Didn't know the type or anything like that. But my father being in the military, we were then flown to Washington DC to Walter Reed Military Hospital, Army Medical [00:21:00] Hospital, I forget the title, I think they've changed it now to Walter Reed in DC, for me to have more tests done to see how they could save my leg.

Months after that. I mean, my father and I literally lived in the hospital, in Walter Reed in DC, while my mother was back in Romulus, New York with the rest of the kids. Because they have four biological kids and adopted three. So she had six kids to deal with back in Romulus, and my dad and I were in Walter Reed. After doing all these tests and everything, they decided that my cancer was extremely aggressive, already too grown, all of the muscle mass and the arteries and everything were going through it. They gave it a name, synovial cell sarcoma.

And they decided that I either had to have extreme surgery, the leg would be very deformed, or an amputation. After they found out and gave the name, they [00:22:00] said that it's too aggressive of a cancer and wasn't something that they saw in teenagers very often, more like in retired Olympic participants of an older age and everything like that.

So they decided in order not to take any risks that they would amputate three inches above the knee. And so, a day or two before my father's birthday, we went through the amputation and it was horrible. But at the same time, I still felt like it was gonna be okay. I was in the States, I had parents, everybody was taking care of me and you know, that was gonna be okay.

So it wasn't as traumatic because I'm comparing it to worse trauma, I guess. And that's the way that I've always tried to survive things by comparing it to something worse. You know, I guess that's part of the don't be ungrateful brand that I had put into my head. [00:23:00] So I was grateful yet that I had parents still, I had food, I had medical care, and I was gonna be okay.

So the amputation happened, and then we had to go down to San Antonio, Texas, to Fort Sam Houston for my chemo and radiation treatment. And we were there for two years. I had my portacath placed, we started going through chemotherapy radiation. I would shut down because I was already taught not to talk about unpleasant things.

So I would have therapists come and talk to me, and I would not wanna tell them anything because, you know, the first time that I had a therapist talk to me, they went and told my parents everything I said. So I didn't trust that. So I developed different ways of dealing with things that aren't very good, I guess you could say.

[00:24:00] I planned how I was gonna kill myself because I didn't want to be this person. I didn't wanna be who I was. I didn't wanna hide all of the stuff that I was feeling and, you know, nobody to go to. But I really didn't know how to go about it. So, you know, I developed self-hate.

I look almost identical to my biological mother, who I hated for everything that we went through. The sexual molestation didn't only come from my uncle, it came from her boyfriends while we were with her. So, at this point in time, I lost my leg and I had so much going on. As a teenager, you want a boyfriend, you wanna go to the prom.

We weren't popular at Romulus when we first got there because it was majority whites. And so, you know, we got [00:25:00] called all of that stuff. And I didn't understand that because in the country that I came from, there is racism, but it's more like economical discrimination more than racism. So then I started meeting people of other color, not a lot of people.

I had one really good friend, her name was Tina, and she started to explain to me what was happening. So then I started becoming angry about that. And you know, the Blacks didn't accept me because of my skin tone. And the whites said, well, she's light-skinned, but not one of us. So it was hard for us to blend in.

After I lost my leg, though, I became somewhat of a celebrity because once I lost my leg and I was going through all of this hospitalization and everything, they did fundraisers and things like that. So when I got done with my chemo in San Antonio, we went back up to the town where we were originally from.

And when I went to [00:26:00] school, everybody kind of knew about me. You know, the kid that lost their leg and stuff like that. So I was more accepted then. And so then people started including me in things. And, you know, my father was in the volunteer fire department and things like that, so things kind of got a little better for us after that.

I overheard my mother telling my psychiatrist that came and saw me, but for her not to have to clean up my vomit and everything, they would like sedate me, but my sedation wasn't complete. Like I could hear things going on in the room and I could feel when they would inject. There was one medication that was red and it would burn really bad when it went into your body and it would give you a bad taste in your mouth.

And my psychiatrist was there and she started talking to my mother. And my mother told her that she felt like it was my fault that I got cancer. And because she thought that, she [00:27:00] felt like I had done it for attention. And then the psychiatrist was like, you know, that's not possible, right? But I shared that with you to give you the idea of where the rest of the story is gonna go.

So we went back to Romulus. I got a boyfriend. I was engaged to a boy that was half Vietnamese and half American. And his mother hated me. She wanted him to have a white woman and not me. So they did everything possible to try to make sure that didn't happen.

So after graduation, like a few days after, they moved away to Alaska. He sent me a ring from Alaska. I was engaged to him there. And then soon after that he broke up when he went to college and found somebody else. So then the pressure became you have to find somebody to help you afford your prosthetic leg because your insurance is running out.

[00:28:00] You're 18 and this and that. So I had that in my mind. I had like a ticker. So I got a job. I was a manager at McDonald's. That's not anything to write home about, but I met a gentleman, he was in the military and I thought that this was not my get outta jail free card, but you know, just like, hey, this guy's in the military. For me, I grew up very attracted to men in the military because of my father.

My father never abused me. He never touched me. He was a man that I really looked up to and, you know, when I was a kid and he put that uniform on, there was nothing that he couldn't do. So with that psychology, I met this guy, he was in the US Army, and I wanted to be a military wife.

My goal before then was to be in the military like my father, but after I lost my leg that, you know, was [00:29:00] not just put on the back burner, but totally out of the picture. So I said, okay, I'll be a military wife. I can do this, I can travel around the world and, you know, this and that. And so we married.

And that was my first husband, my daughter's biological father. And I thought that this was it. We started having domestic violence issues. I was a raging lunatic. I'm not gonna blame him a hundred percent because I had all of these issues, rejection, trauma, and everything inside of me. So the littlest thing that he would do, he would think it was funny to come at me.

And my automatic mechanism was to shiver. So he would do things like that and, you know, I would like psychologically lose it. And so we were very physically abusive to one another. [00:30:00] I told my mom, you know, I can't do this. I'm about to have a baby. And she told me, Anissa, nobody's gonna want you. You have one leg and you're gonna have a kid. Who's gonna take care of you?

So I moved to Puerto Rico with him. He hit me in Puerto Rico again. I had some friends in upstate New York that I went to school with. They bought a plane ticket for me to come back, and then he called and he cried. And the thing with men crying, it has like a soft spot for me because I only saw my dad cry one time.

And that was when I was told that I was having my leg amputated. So, to me, when I see a man cry, I kind of believe him. So he called me and he was crying. He wanted to be a family. I told him, okay, come back. We'll work things out. He came back. Things were good for a while, you know. Now, all these years after, I understand about the honeymoon period and all of that stuff.

So we had a long honeymoon period [00:31:00] because it was right before I gave birth. I gave birth in October and I had a baby girl. She's my life, she's my life. She's my lifeline. You know, after I had her, I went to my six-month appointment. He had already cheated on me. I told him, well, my friends wanted me to go out with them and I said, watch Vanessa. I wanna go out with my friends.

So we went down to the club and, you know, when you have to get up at six in the morning, it's not the same as before when you would get up at nine or whatever time you wanted. Then you can hang out all night. And I was exhausted. So I had like maybe a couple hours out and I fell asleep literally on the bar.

And my friends were like, oh, we gotta take you home. So I went home and when I got home, I caught him. I either caught him in the process of or caught him in the planning stage of what [00:32:00] he was doing. I'm not sure what it was. But I came to the house and he swore that I wasn't at the bar. He swore that I had been at some man's house.

He swore that I was up to no good. And I was like, look, you know, I can't, I don't wanna argue about this. I'm very exhausted. And I wanted to go check on my daughter and I wanted to go to sleep 'cause I was exhausted. And so I was going up the steps and I have to go up them one by one 'cause I have one leg.

And he shoved by me and beat me to the top of the steps. And he wouldn't let me go by unless I told him where I was. And I told him I was at the bar with the girls and I said, I'm just tired. I fell asleep on the bar and I just wanna come home. I wanna look at Vanessa, I wanna take my shower and I wanna go lay down.

And he said, no, you're not gonna have me look like an idiot. And so by this time I am trying to push my [00:33:00] way with my body weight. And he is, what? 6 foot, 6’ 1” maybe. I'm 5’9”, 5’10”. So, you know, it's not that much of a difference. And I'm thinking I can push by him. I'm thinking when I get up there, I can get by him.

The last thing I remember was feeling my body like lose weight. And he pushed me down the flight of steps. I woke up in the emergency room with my daughter in a carrier next to me. And that's when I said, once I gained my thoughts and everything, this is it. So I went ahead. I got an order of restraint.

I got our things out of the house. We were in a shelter for a week or two until we found our own place. We found a studio apartment for my daughter and I to live in, and I started my role as a single mother. So [00:34:00] I started working, babysitting kids at night when their parents were working the graveyard shift and things like that.

Just things to be able to make ends meet. And it just never seemed to make ends meet. But, you know, I was doing everything that I could think of. My job was always to the point where I made just enough not to get any help from the government, but not enough to cover everything. And I started to see patterns of people that were, you know, on welfare or living in government housing.

And I didn't want that for Vanessa. And my whole goal was to always protect her, for her not to go hungry, for her not to be sexually abused, for her not to have any kind of, I guess, trauma or anything like that, as much as I could help it. So there began that rat race, you know, trying to cover this, trying to cover that.

I went to school to be a dental assistant and [00:35:00] I really enjoyed that, but I realized that I could not survive on that. So then I decided I was gonna go to be a hygienist because I became good friends with a hygienist. And then I couldn't stop working and go to school with a child, you know? And so I decided that I couldn't do it just yet.

Let's wait until she gets into school and is a little more independent. I didn't have that support system, like the ability to move home or anything like that, because I was always told I made my bed. I have to lay in it by leaving my husband. So I left him and I kept, you know, doing whatever I could. Then she started Head Start. I don't know if you know what Head Start is?

Haley Radke: It's like a preschool program, right?

Anissa: Yeah. Right. So then she started doing that, [00:36:00] and so I started picking up classes and doing things here and there, trying to get myself together. And then she started going to school where it was more full-time. I started looking at my options.

I decided that I didn't wanna be helping a doctor. I got stuck with a dirty needle twice. This was right before AIDS started coming out. So it was kind of scary that I would have that risk of a dentist handing me the needle back and getting stuck with a needle that was really, really dirty.

So, I didn't wanna do that. So I then decided that I wanted to go back to school in the medical field. I went to Phoenix, Arizona. I started going to school there. I went to PIMA Medical Institute and I decided I'm gonna be a physician's assistant. And I didn't like Arizona. I want trees, I want grass, I want seasons.

[00:37:00] There are people that either love Arizona or hate it because the yards are rocks and sand and

Haley Radke: The one thing I know about Arizona is that sometimes in the summer, like you can't get cold water out of your water tap because the pipes are hot. That's what I know about Arizona.

Anissa: That is correct. I met a lot of good people in Arizona that I'm still friends with, too, to this day. I learned a lot, but if you're a person that likes the outdoors, Arizona is probably not it unless you like heat. Now I don't, I don't like heat. I am an upstate New York girl. I love the snow. I love the cold.

You know, I learned to ski, all of that stuff. And being there with rocks and peppercorn trees is not my idea of a good time. I was never able to afford to go out to Flagstaff [00:38:00] and ski. I heard that it was nice skiing up there, but I never was able to do that.

So I went there. My biological mother was living in Glendale. I lived in Chandler. My biological sister, she had found her and gave her my information. I started trying to develop a relationship with her, but that never could be. Ever. I mean, I have tried 13 times to not have a mother/daughter relationship. A lot of adoptees in reunion– that ship kind of has sailed and we're just looking for basically a friendship and if it develops to more than that, wonderful.

But if not, we're happy with being friends. So I just wanted to be friends with her and she just can't forgive herself. And I kind of understand her mentality today because I beat myself up a lot for what has happened with, you know, me and my daughter. But at the same time, I can't take it out on her. And, you know, why take it out on myself? [00:39:00] I already take out enough things on myself. So I tried to develop a relationship with her. It didn't work.

I did my internship at a clinic there in Tempe. I then went back to New York. And I tried to find work in the medical field. And a lot of work in the medical field wasn't paying yet what I was able to make soldering and assembling at a factory.

And that was one of the jobs that I had before I started going to school. And I loved to do things with my hands, solder, you know, do things like that. So I was making more in a factory than I was in the medical field, and I was fine with that. Although frowned upon by my parents, it was something that paid the bills and it was something that I enjoyed.

And I'm still thinking that I'm gonna go up to Syracuse to get into their physician's assistance program to be a physician's assistant because I love the medical field. So I couldn't [00:40:00] do that because financially that wasn't possible and I already had student loans, so I am repaying student loans.

I'm trying to find out how I am going to be a physician's assistant. You know, how I'm gonna work that out. I got a second job at another factory and I left the one that I was at to do wire harnesses at another one. By this time, Vanessa is already ten, eleven-ish, somewhere around there. We'd had many dollar store Christmases, and we've had Christmases where, you know, there was nothing.

So I decided that this year I'm gonna get a second job just for the holiday season. So I went and I got a job at a retail store. I'm working at this retail store just for Christmas 2003. Because my car wasn't working. The money I was making wasn't good enough to cover everything. And you know, when you live up north, I don't know if [00:41:00] you know or not, but the electric, the heating bill is high and you kind of try to keep up the payments on it for it not to get turned off, but then you still have a balance at the end of the season.

So I'm like trying to catch up on all of these things and provide a good Christmas for my daughter. A friend of mine came into the store and she said, hey, I have some things that I purchased. I purchased it on this credit card. Can you take it back? I lost the receipt. And since it was a holiday gig and, you know, you're not really invested in that position or anything like that. So I don't care, bring it in. So then she did it not once, maybe two or three times.

But when you say yes the first time, it's hard to say no after that. So I did it. My job was over. I went home, it's 2004. Early part of 2004, the sheriffs came knocking on my door. They [00:42:00] said, we wanna speak to Anissa Druesedow. I said, I am Anissa Druesedow. And they said, did you work at this store? And I said, yes. And they said, from this time to that time? And I said, yes. And they said, do you know this person? And I said, yes.

And they said, did you do this? Did you do that? And I said, well, I did this. I didn't do that. Whenever you're dealing with like the criminal system, it seems like they try to stick in as much as you can to get you to plead guilty to as much as you can. And I'm like, no, I didn't do that. I didn't do that.

After a while, I looked on my schedule and I saw that I wasn't working on some of these days. And in the cash register there's two receipts, one that stays with the store and the other one that you would give to the customer. Sometimes we would run out of them and use a thinner one that didn't have numbers on them.

So I was like, I can't say which ones I did and [00:43:00] which ones I didn't, because these numbers are not enough for the number on the receipt. And there were just like a lot of things we went back and forth on. So then the sheriff called me and said, can you come down? We need to talk to you.

I said, okay. I called my neighbor 'cause I think that we're still going through this, you know, trying to cipher things out. And I think that after all of this is said and done, that it's gonna be fine. So I called my neighbor and I said, hey, can you keep an eye on Vanessa for me? She's at home. I have to go down and talk to the sheriff.

They said, okay. So I went down to talk to the sheriffs and they arrested me. Of course, I didn't go down with the lawyer. I never consulted a lawyer because I didn't have money to pay for a lawyer and I didn't have that kind of mentality that I needed a lawyer. So they arrested me for a whole bunch of charges.

I can't even go into all of them. I don't remember them. And they locked me up and they didn't give me bail because they said that I was [00:44:00] a threat to run away or escape threat or something like that. And I was like, where am I gonna run to? This is where I've lived my whole life. Well, you're from Jamaica.

I said, yeah, I was born there, but I was adopted to the US, and then once a judge heard the story and everything, he gave me bail. My full-time job at that time bailed me out. And I got out. My sister had my daughter, I got my daughter. I started going back to work and, you know, trying to find out, figure out what I'm gonna do.

I have a public defendant. The public defendant comes to me and says, they're offering you four to 12. And I'm like, four to 12? And I didn't know this at the time, but I guess that's their little tactic. Their little scare tactic. They work with the DA and everything like that. And he said, yeah, four to 12.

I said, I can't accept four to 12. My co-defendant has six months of weekends, and [00:45:00] I'm gonna accept a four to 12? No. So then he goes, well, let me go back and see what they say. So then he came back and he said, they'll give you one to three. I said, one to three years in prison. Why can't I get weekends, six months of weekends?

Because then I could have my sister watch my daughter while I, you know, paid the price for this horrible thing that I did, right? So he was like, well, this is a better deal than six months in jail, six months of weekends in jail. And I said, how so? He said, well, your full-time job bailed you out, so let's talk to them and see if they'll give you a letter.

If they give you a letter, you'll be out on work release in a month and a half. And I was like, really? He goes, yeah, so you can just go away for a month and a half, read some books, relax, and then come home. And I'm like, okay. I went to my job and they said, yeah, we will give you a letter for you to come back. That's not a problem.

So they gave me the letter, [00:46:00] I gave the letter to the lawyer. I went in, I pled guilty to grand larceny, falsifying business records to the tune of less than $4,000, 3,000 and something. Of course, in my mind, I'm the biggest criminal that ever walked the face of this earth. It wasn't until I got processed that I realized that my sentence was like ridiculous for the crime.

Everybody that I was locked up with had like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they had the same sentence that I did. But again, I didn't know. I couldn't afford a lawyer and I didn't know any better. So I went and pled guilty.

Nobody ever said to me, Hey Anissa, if you plead guilty to this, you face a risk of being deported. And I was fine with it. I was gonna go up for a month and a half and I'll be home, you know, pick up my life and try to lead it as best as I could after that. So I went up [00:47:00] to Bedford Hills, a maximum security prison for women in New York City.

They had no handicap facility. I had to hop on wet tiles. I fell. They wanted me to squat down and, you know, all of these things. And I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to do that. I broke the law. I'm willing to pay my price, but I didn't have anything to hold onto. I had not even a grab bar or anything.

So I'm like, this really stinks. I hope this gets better soon. But I went into my mind that had already been in an institution. So I just locked down, became, you know, not combative at all. Whatever they said I did, even if I fell on the shower floor that was filthy and I wanted to cry afterwards. But I just did what I needed to do.

So now they've processed me and they told me that I'm gonna go to Albion, another women's prison, but this one is [00:48:00] closer to where I live. So my whole goal was to get closer to home, to maybe see my family, maybe see my kid, you know, whatever. So I'm sitting there waiting for our pack out day.

They say Ripley, that was my name, that's my married name, my first husband. They said, Ripley, you have visitors. And I'm like, in New York City? I don't know anybody in New York City. And so I got escorted down to the visiting area and there were three gentlemen there, all of them big, you know, cop-looking like, but they didn't have uniforms on. They had like khaki pants or something like that if I remember correctly.

And they introduced themselves and said that they were from ICE. And I was like, in my mind, the only ICE I knew about was the one in the freezer. I had no idea. And then they explained to me, I was like, ICE what? And they were like, immigration, you know, they [00:49:00] named off the whole big name.

And I was like, okay. So I'm like, what do these guys want? So they started asking me, what border did you come in? And I was like, I don't know. And they, how did you get here? I said, my parents brought me here. What country are you from? I said, well, I'm from Panama. I was born in Jamaica, but I was adopted in Panama.

And oh, your parents are adopted? I said, yeah, my parents are adopted. My father was in the military. We came in on military orders and yeah, why? And they were like, what language do you speak? And I was like, English and a little bit of Spanish. You know when you don't use it, you lose it. And I lived upstate New York where my Spanish was very limited.

I used to help Puerto Ricans and Dominicans with their welfare, filling out their welfare papers for them. But I didn't speak it fluently by any stretch of the imagination. And they're like, yeah, you don't sound Spanish. You don't sound Jamaican either. And I was like, yeah, because, I'm sorry, I don't know what to [00:50:00] tell you. I'm adopted.

And one of the rules at my house was when we were adopted, we were not able to speak Spanish. My sister and I could not speak anything but English because if we wanted to be Americans, we had to learn the language. So they were like, oh, so you're adopted and okay, we'll check into it and we'll get back to you.

And I was like, I thought, okay, I missed a bullet. So I went back to my cell, it came time for us to be taken from New York City to Albion. While I was at Albion, they called my name for mail and I got an order of deportation, and I was like, an order of deportation? As soon as we were let go, I went to the phone and I called my parents, and I told my mom. I said, I have an order of deportation. What is this about?

And she was like, I don't know. If you hadn't gotten in trouble, you wouldn't be in this [00:51:00] position. And I'm like, wow, okay. I'm like, am I going to be deported? What is happening here? I mean, I didn't choose to come here, I didn't not do paperwork. As far as I'm concerned, there was apple pie and then me. I mean, I am as American as I could get in my head, right?

And I was like, what are you talking about? And then she's like, I don't know, I have to call and I have to talk to a lawyer. And I'm like, okay, so they're gonna talk to a lawyer and this is all gonna be ironed out. So then I was able to call once a week to my parents because of the cost and everything.

So the following week I called and I was like, did you talk to a lawyer? She says, yes, I talked to a lawyer and the lawyer said that we could get in trouble for human trafficking for doing this. And then she kept talking about how had I not broken the law, [00:52:00] how had I not done this and how had I not, you know, always shifting the blame, and okay, I am willing to take the blame for my part in it, but you know, I cannot be deported.

Where am I gonna be deported? Jamaica? I left there when I was what age? In Panama I have nothing. Where are you deporting me to? So the following week I called my parents and they wouldn't answer the phone. I kept trying to call every day when I was able to, when the phones were free, I'd go and call. They wouldn't answer the phone.

And I was like, what's happening? So my mother started to do things that she used to do to my other sister. My daughter would write me a letter saying that she had fallen asleep and that my mother had grabbed her by her hair to wake her up, to pull her off the couch. And those are things that she would do [00:53:00] to my sister. So I didn't think that they were lies.

So then I got in touch with my biological sister that lived in Florida, and I asked her to please get Vanessa, because I didn't want Vanessa to go through that treatment that I had already seen. My sister was not my mom's favorite by any stretch of the imagination. And she ended up running away after there was an incident where she was made to come downstairs and just like a teenager, she dropped her books on the table and that pushed my mom over the edge.

My mom jumped on her and started ripping handfuls of hair out of her head. And my other sister jumped on my mom and grabbed her and held her down, and my sister ran out of the house and never came back again. And you know, she cut all ties to them and everything like that. And she wasn't really [00:54:00] close to anybody in the family, but she stepped up to the plate and helped me with my daughter in the meantime.

So my daughter had to go from New York to Miami, and I had already done the year for New York State. New York State didn't want me in their custody anymore and I had an immigration hold. I couldn't do anything. So then they took me back up to Bedford Hill, and then at Bedford Hill, they said, here is your Greyhound ticket.

ICE has until this time to come pick you up. And if they don't come pick you up, we take you to the Greyhound bus station and you have to be in Rochester checking in with your parole officer tomorrow. At this time you have to go and do this for work release. And you know, they give you the whole rundown like you're getting sent home.

So I'm sitting in a cell sweating, hoping that ICE doesn't come and show up. And about five minutes before the time that they were supposed to let me go, they said, Ripley, ICE is here for [00:55:00] you, get dressed. So I got dressed and ICE took me over to New Jersey, to Hudson County jail. At first, they had me in general population, but because of my leg and everything, I couldn't stay in those small cells.

So then they took me down to the infirmary. In the infirmary, I was locked in 23 hours a day. I was out one hour. And by this time I had two 401ks and I cashed out one of them and hired a lawyer. Her name is Monica Reed. And Monica Reed kept assuring me, you're not gonna get deported. This is illegal what they're doing to you. We're gonna get you out. You're gonna be fine. You know?

And I believed her wholeheartedly because how can you deport an adopted person? You know? You pull somebody outta their culture, erase all of their culture, reprogram them with the culture, take them in when they're kids and they're nice and cute, but then when they're [00:56:00] adults and they make mistakes or whatever, then you send them back to the orphanage?

You know, that was always a fear as a child, that I better behave and I better be good and I better be grateful, or else I might get sent back to the orphanage. And I didn't wanna do that. And here I was an adult facing that possibility. And it was something that I could not wrap my head around in no shape or form.

So they have me in the basement of Hudson County jail. Sewage backs up. I have to be taken out and put into the box, where like really bad inmates go, because they don't have anywhere else to put me. And then I get put back into the infirmary. And then one day I went to court and they told me my lawyer passed away from an asthma attack.

And I'm like, my lawyer passed away from an asthma attack? Excuse me? Come again? So the judge gave me three weeks [00:57:00] to decide what I was gonna do, if I was going to hire another attorney or if I was going to sign and leave. And I had one more 401k. And I'm like, I gotta cash this 401k and I gotta get a lawyer.

So when you get done with immigration court, they put you in a holding cell. So that was my plan in the holding cell. I gotta cash this 401k and I have to get another lawyer 'cause I cannot be sent back to where my uncles might be. They might kill me or whatever. I can't go to Jamaica where I don't know anything except for what you and I see on postcards or the ads on the TV for you to go to the island.

I don't know anything. And when I used to tell people that I was born in Jamaica, they were like, do you smoke weed? I'm like, no. And you don't talk like a Jamaican, you're not a Jamaican. So this is my mind that nobody's gonna ever see me as a Jamaican. [00:58:00] So I was like, yeah, that's what I'm gonna do.

On my way back, I had already been transported back and forth enough to where the guards didn't feel threatened by me. They stopped putting shackles on me because I have one leg. Where am I gonna run? I'm not running anywhere. So then, you know, they got cool with me and they would like buy me sandwiches from McDonald's, Burger King, whatever.

So on my way home, this one ICE officer, he was like, so Rip, what you gonna do? And I'm like, well, I gotta get back to the cell. I gotta get back on the phone. I gotta find somebody that's gonna help me get my 401k and I've gotta hire a lawyer. And he is like, Ripley, wait, you don't get mail? Nobody comes to visit you? You are not the first adoptee that's been through here, and you're not gonna be the last adoptee.

He goes, can I give you my two cents? And I said, sure. He said, it will be best for you to go get your 401k while you're out and fight [00:59:00] this from the outside instead of wasting your money on another lawyer. Because who's gonna help you if you get deported and you have no money? I was like, I don't know.

I have to think about it because by this time my parents weren't having anything to do with me. My sister and I have a bad relationship because, you know, she left and I stayed at the house, and then I get the brunt of staying and siding with the people that abused her. And to this day, we don't have a relationship, just to give you an idea.

And so, my other sisters? Letters? Nothing. So I went back to my cell and I was thinking about it and I said, it's true, who is going to help me if I'm deported? I don't get care packages; I don't get anything. So, you know, I [01:00:00] had already come to terms with me being on my own. So I called and I said, I wanna be deported.

So a couple weeks went by, at three o'clock in the morning the metal door slams open, I'm half asleep. They have flashlights on them. They have flashlights mounted to them, and they come in and they throw you a bag with some clothes in it, and they say, get dressed. You're gonna be deported to a lifetime vacation.

And I'm like, I'm leaving? Can I make a phone call? They're like, no. You can't make a phone call. Nobody can know that you're leaving. Okay? So I got dressed. They took us to JFK and we were all in this van. I think I was the only woman. The rest of them were men. And when our times came up, they would take us up and put us on the plane. [01:01:00]

And my time came up, they took me to the, to the gate,

and I walked onto the plane.

That was the

biggest psychological screw that I've ever had in my life. I'm leaving the country that I call home. I'm going to a country I don't know. And I can't believe that what I have done would, I would deserve such a thing. And that a whole country that I love and that a whole country that I thought was mine was kicking me out.

You know, a whole country didn't want me there. And so I got on a plane and they flew me into Kingston. I was supposed to go to Montego Bay because that's where I was born. But either way, had I landed in either one, I was just as [01:02:00] lost. I could have landed in China and it would've had the same effect. So I landed in Kingston, They took me off the plane.

I was walking with the people. I thought I was normal by now, and they were like, no, come this way. So I got taken into an office and then questioned for hours. You know, you're Jamaican, you're this person because I only had a handwritten birth certificate. That's the only thing that I had, a handwritten birth certificate.

And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And I had to explain to them the whole story about, you know, how I was born here, taken to Panama, adopted by the US. I committed a crime; I was deported here. And they're like, you don't speak Patois? I said, no, I don't. He goes, where are you gonna stay? I said, I have no idea. You guys accepted me here. [01:03:00]

You guys never knew anything about this? I mean, did you see my picture that I'm a light complexioned person? Did you see? You're not black? No, I'm not black. You know, all of these questions. I finally said, so why did you bend over to the US government and take me if you didn't think that I was Jamaican?

So when I started getting aggressive and when I started using words that you reserve for certain times, they were like, okay, go. So they let me out. It was night. They let me out and I wanted to go back into the room. There was a row of taxi drivers and they were all screaming about what they were gonna do to me, how they were gonna do it to me, the amount of time that they were gonna do it to me.

And they started calling me “browning,” which now I know that's what they call people of my complexion. And I was like totally [01:04:00] freaked out that these grown men that were just a sidewalk space away from me were doing all of this. My prosthetic leg was broken and there was one older gentleman that was just sitting on the trunk of his car and since he wasn't screaming anything at me, I felt like I could approach him.

And I said, can I please borrow your phone to call so that somebody can come pick me up, or so that people know where I'm at? He says, how much money do you have? I said, I have no money. I said, I have no money. I just have what I'm wearing. That's all I have. And he said, you're deported? And I said, yeah. He said, why they deport to Jamaica?

I said, I'm from Jamaica, and here goes the whole story again. Well, I was born blah, blah, blah. And so I finally convinced him that it'll only be one minute. So I called a woman back in the US. I told her I was [01:05:00] in Jamaica, but I was in Kingston. I had nothing. And she was like, can you go to a nearby government facility?

Because you know, people think as they do in the US where you can go to places and get help. And I'm like, I can't see anything but there's darkness and some lights in the parking lot. I don't know where to go. And she was like, sit still. Stay at the airport. Don't leave the airport. They called some people from Montego Bay that were in the church and they came and they picked me up and took me to Montego Bay.

My biological mother by this time has found one of her sisters that lives on the island and she was supposed to come pick me up. I was with these people from church for four days. She did not wanna come pick me up because her husband didn't want a white woman in her house, in his house.

But I didn't have any place else to go. I had that trauma of being locked up. So I would stay in the room, locked in the room. And finally they talked me into [01:06:00] coming out more and coming out more. And they told us about that when we were in prison, but I didn't really believe it. I was like, if I have the choice to leave, you know, an open door, I am walking out of it.

But all of that became reality. And I was really a mess for those four days. And I was a worse mess when my aunt told me that this man didn't want me in his house 'cause I still hadn't gotten my money from my 401k to even rent a room. It was, I mean, I, I can't even put it into words.

So she said, this is what we have to do. He goes to bed, he's a mechanic. He works until this time; he goes to bed at this time. You have to stay in the park here, and then we can go up to the house and then you can go in. You have to wait till he leaves. He leaves at this time, and then you can leave when you can come down.

So I got my 401k. She asked me to borrow some money [01:07:00] because in her mind I'm a rich American, not a handicapped grown woman, a niece of hers that was adopted. There's no kind of connection there. I mean, you know, you see your aunt, she gives you a hug. There's nothing, it's like I'm another woman on the streets.

And I, and growing up, seeing that with my family, I always wanted that warmth or that, you know, something that made you feel that you can hang on to, you know, as an adoptee that was adopted, you know, at a certain age, it's hard to build those kinds of relationships, but you hold onto what little you can get. There was nothing there.

So she asked me to borrow some money. She never paid me back. I rented a room. Vanessa came to Jamaica. I had to pretend like everything was gonna be okay. I couldn't freak out, you know, I couldn't. I couldn't show what was happening inside me on the outside because now I had to be a strong mom for Vanessa again.

So we were there and we were running outta money fast because my [01:08:00] rice cooking skills were not, I couldn't cook rice. It's an embarrassment to say, but we're a potato, pasta kind of people. We don't, I don't know how to cook Jamaican food. I like the flavor. Sometimes it's a little too much.

Sometimes I want my potatoes and gravy with my roast, my pork chop. So I would go to the store and I would buy mac and cheese that would cost 8 dollars. But I didn't know how else to survive. Sometimes I would buy food from the woman that cooked in the front, but I was kind of sketchy because of my medical background. I could see maybe health issues with their cooking set-up, you know? So I was like scared. I would go eat at McDonald's or KFC, but that was extremely expensive and I was [01:09:00] running outta money fast. So I knew I had papers for Panama. And I quickly saw that I couldn't be a nurse. I wasn't gonna be a teacher, and I wasn't gonna be a tour guide. Back in that time those were the careers of choice for a lot of women and I didn't have any papers or anything that I completed, anything.

I had a handwritten birth certificate and they gave me hell for that when I went and tried to get my IDs. They actually didn't really wanna give me a passport, so I was like, let me go to Panama. Plug in Panama City. Panama. I saw that the jobs there were a lot of call center jobs for the US so it was English speaking and they were paying, you know, like two dollars and something, which I couldn't get my head to understand. I was like, this must be something messed up in the ad.

I said, well, Vanessa, we are gonna go to Panama. She's [01:10:00] like, Panama? I dunno how to speak Spanish. I was like, it's okay, we'll learn. So I used my last $2,000 to buy a ticket and to pay to get to Kingston to fly out to come to Panama City. By this time my biological mother had voluntarily deported from the US and she was here in Panama.

And I thought, okay, maybe we can have a relationship. We can help each other. I just wanna, you know, be with her for a while, get myself on my feet and then get away from her because I know she's not a good person for me. So while I was in Jamaica, I was there for nine months, I met a gentleman. I asked him out to pizza.

He said he liked me. I said, well, don't get too attached 'cause I'm not gonna be staying here. I'm gonna be leaving and going to Panama. And he goes, can I go with you? And I said, sure, you can go with me. He goes, but I don't speak Spanish. I say, well, all three of us can learn. So [01:11:00] he asked me to marry him. November of 2006, I said yes.

In December of 2006, Vanessa and I flew to Panama. My biological mother met us at the airport. In February of 2007 he came from Jamaica to Panama and we got married in February of 2007 here in Panama. And while we were living with my mother, my biological mother, she became very jealous of my daughter.

I couldn't show my daughter a lot of attention. She would slam doors. She would tell Vanessa to shut up. She would tell me that she doesn't wanna hear her voice. It makes her sick. And I finally said to her, so, what do you want me to do? You want me to just leave her with somebody or kick her out? Because, I said, she's my daughter. I would give my life for her.

So when I started talking to her like that and shutting her down with her “I hate Vanessa” rhetoric. She told me to get out [01:12:00] again. I didn't know where I was gonna go, but I know that before I caused my daughter more pain, I had to get away from her.

I started working as an interpreter at a call center making $3.47 an hour. Don't ask me how I was interpreting, Haley. I do not know. But you know, they say fake it till you make it. That's exactly what I was doing. I could understand the English speaker perfectly, but the Spanish speaker I could not understand for the life of me, and the speed that they spoke it! It was like, really?

But I found a call center that allowed me to interpret for stateside businesses. They had different levels of interpreting, so I was doing getting your electric turned on, turned off, transferring the services, renting cars, which I did not know how to say, none of those words, but I was not gonna let go of that because the rest of the call [01:13:00] centers were paying $1.75, $2.15 and I couldn't go down. My husband at that time didn't have a work permit. He had no papers.

I didn't know what was gonna happen. I mean, it was like just kicking and moving my arms to keep afloat. I didn't know what was gonna happen. Then this woman tells me I have to get out. So back in the day, you buy a newspaper. And you go and you open the newspaper to the classified ads and you find a place you wanna live that you can afford, you go look at it.

If it's good, you, you take it. If it's not, you keep looking. That's what I was doing here in Panama. I found a place that was for rent in a town called Veracruz for the price of $250, which I thought, $250 is a good price. I am not thinking my wage level. I am thinking US wage level.

So I didn't have any paperwork for my daughter's school. I had to put her in private school. [01:14:00] Private school is you have to pay for everything, books, lunches, uniforms, socks, even gym clothes, everything. It was $174 a month. And it got to be too much. We spoke to the landlord. The landlord said, yeah, he would help us out, knock it down to $150 to try to get us some financial assistance.

So we were living there. For the first few months that we were there, our sewage would run in the ditch in front of us. We had boils. Vanessa and I were covered in boils. It was a nightmare, but I had to smile the whole time and make sure Vanessa knew that it was okay and that we were gonna make it. We found another house that was much better, in a better place.

And the person that had the house became friends with my husband and he was going back to the States. So he let us rent it for the same price, [01:15:00] although it was bigger. And each one of us had our own rooms instead of just being one room with all of us in there. And he sold us a car for $1,500. We paid it off little by little because walking in a prosthetic leg in a tropical country is not fun at all.

You're sitting in a plastic bucket and it's minimum 90°, 91° outside. And I had blisters, bleeding blisters. I had rub marks. My prosthetic leg, in Jamaica I had to go and have it welded by car mechanics because there's no orthopedic legs or anything in Jamaica. Nothing. Everybody there walks around with crutches.

And I was like, why are you guys with crutches? Don't you like your hands? Because when you use crutches, you lose your hands. And there were people there very talented where they were walking just with one crutch and no prosthetic leg, and they were walking smoothly. They didn't even have a limb. I have a limb and I admired them a lot, but there's [01:16:00] no orthopedic clinics, prosthetic leg, nothing.

So when I was in Panama, my leg was worse. And we found some people that, you know, felt probably pity for us, for the three of us. They got us a leg; they bought the leg for me and everything like that. And I had a good leg for a while. And we were just struggling. My husband didn't have the ability to get a job or anything like that.

He didn't speak Spanish. And I really, I guess, downplayed the need to speak Spanish when living in a Spanish country. And, you know, he had to do like little odds and ends jobs where he'd make like $10 or $5, because here they don't wanna pay you. They think, okay, even expats that live here, when I say expats, people from other countries, when they come here, they don't come here and wanna pay.

They wanna pay, you know, less because they're living on a limited budget [01:17:00] and things like that. So he would do these little jobs and people would give him, you know, little change and stuff like that, which was a big help. So Vanessa was going to school, I was working, and one day I said to Vanessa, Vanessa, bring me your notebook so I can see what's going on.

Because it was just, you know, a struggle with her. She was grabbed underneath her uniform skirt, but we were prepared for that 'cause that happened to us when we were kids. So she had on shorts underneath it. And you know, I told her, hit 'em with your backpack. Do whatever you can. They're gonna do this, they're gonna do that.

You know, everything in my experience as a child, and Vanessa was suffering with so much depression she would vomit and have diarrhea before going to school. It was just so much for her. There are no words for everything that she was going through. And I had to pay a tutor. She wanted to charge me $10 an hour. I couldn't afford to pay $10 an hour.

So [01:18:00] I said, okay, we're just gonna do one hour twice a week for her to help you. So this woman wasn't making enough money off of this rich American because everybody saw me as a rich American. And she would not help Vanessa learn. She would do the homework for her.

My daughter has a doctor's handwriting and when I looked at this notebook, I was like, Vanessa, your handwriting is so beautiful. It's in cursive. I can't even do this. Wow. And she's like, mom, I didn't do that. My teacher did it. I was like, what? So I'm paying $174 plus her transportation, plus her uniform and all of this, and you're not learning anything.

And so I spoke it over with a friend of ours here that's an American, that's married to a Panamanian, and I spoke it over with him and he goes, Vanessa's had just turned 17. And he said, have you thought about sending her back to the US for her to get her [01:19:00] GED? Of course I haven't. He said, you should think about it.

Send her back to the US. We can see if we can find somebody she could stay with and

she can get her GED and she can, you know, go on to college or whatever, you know. And at first, the only word that came to my mind was, hell no, I'm not gonna send my only child, the only person I share DNA with. The only thing that slightly resembles me, because throughout all of this, she looks more like, you know, we call him her sperm donor than me, but I can see certain things in her.

And she definitely had my bad attitude. I was like, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna send her back. So that night I laid in bed and was talking to my husband about it, and he's like, well, I know it's hard for you to think that way, but what is [01:20:00] she gonna achieve here? When she gets outta school, what is she gonna do?

We can't afford for her to go home. She won't be able to pass a test to go in to college. What is she gonna do? End up working at one of these call centers for $200 every two weeks. So then I had to separate the selfish me from what was best for her.

Haley Radke: I'm so sorry.

Anissa: So we pulled all of our money together. My husband sold a couple tools. I think he impounded them. I don't know. He did something with his tools and bought some money. We got her a laptop and we put her on a plane to Salt Lake City, Utah. She lived in a friend's parents' basement.

She went and studied for her GED, passed it. She applied [01:21:00] for a scholarship to a business school. She got accepted into the business school, full scholarship. We just had to pay for her housing and things. And my husband and I went without a lot to make sure that we paid for her housing and her food. And my daughter is so awesome.

She got a job in charge of the dorm. So they gave her free room and we only sent her money because she needed, you know, money to buy her toiletries and things like that. And she finished school and then I said to her, this is very hard for us. I'm giving you two months for you to [01:22:00] get a second job or something because we can't afford to send you this kind of money and you know it.

So she goes, yeah, mom, I know I'm gonna see what I can do. Don't worry. Three weeks after I told her that, she called me and said, you don't have to send me any more money. I got another job.

She had to have her tonsils removed and I wasn't able to be there for her to hold her hand. She's 18, you know, grown and knows everything but still needs her mom when she had surgery. She was working her two jobs and she decided, I'm gonna go back to school. I said, okay, we'll help you with what we can.

We didn't have to send her a lot, we just had to help, you know, make ends meet basically. So we [01:23:00] did that and she finished that school and then she started working in something that she didn't study. And she is like, mom, if I get this job, I'll be able to send you money.

And that's very painful, you know, to have to have my child send me money and she knows that I need the help. So my prosthetic leg again is breaking, and I met a group of adoptees in the States that bought me a prosthetic leg. So I've had this prosthetic leg for a year and some change. My daughter can't afford to come down and see me very often.

We don't have holidays together because we can't afford a thousand and something dollars for her to fly from up north to come down here at peak time. We haven't had holidays together. This year we were supposed to have Christmas in April, but then [01:24:00] COVID happened. She wasn't able to come down. I get to see her every two to three years when we're able to put the money together.

Haley Radke: What would it mean to you to have American citizenship?

Anissa: It would mean being able to have my family back again. On March 8th I watched my oldest sister die of cancer and I had to say goodbye to her through a video call like we're doing now. It would mean being there for my sisters when they go through their issues like they were for me when I went through my cancer. It would mean having Christmas with my daughter.

It would mean a second chance that I believe I deserve. Had I broken the law with one of my siblings, they would be at home while I was here and I should have the same rights that they [01:25:00] have through adoption and I'm not afforded that right. And I feel like I'm still doing time.

I have been robbed at gunpoint here. They took the car; they took everything in it. They left me in a ditch. I have been robbed at knife point because although I'm not an American here, they see me as an American. It would mean living in the culture that I feel and that I, I mean my Spanish, I still have an American accent.

You know, people right away think I'm from the US. A lot of people when they hear me speak English, they're like, oh, you're from New York. You know? I mean, I was taken out of this culture and my culture was erased and I was reprogrammed with another culture. And now I'm not a cute little girl that needed a family. Now I'm a [01:26:00] grown woman that, people don't seem to care about us adults.

I'm not the only one that has been deported. There are many deportees. A lot of them won't come out outta shame, but this is all I have, Haley, and if my story will help, then I have to share it. Yes, I'm not proud to sit here and undress in front of you and your listening audience, but it's the only thing I can do.

And I'm very grateful for Adoptees for Justice because they're fighting and they've given me a voice. I have been on the Hill with them through video. They've helped me so much. We don't have water. They have sent me money to buy a water tank and a water pump. Now I don't have to carry buckets of water to flush my toilet.

[01:27:00] I mean, it's just so much that we would need probably three weeks sitting here of me telling you this for you to understand what it would mean for me to gain my citizenship, for me to gain something that was promised to me when I was adopted. And not only was I adopted, the US military put me on orders and took me to the US. I mean, who do I call to get this fixed? What do I do?

Vanessa has had to go through therapy. Adoptees for Justice is trying to find me some therapy to do because I suffer with depression and suicidal thoughts. Vanessa is the only thing that is keeping me here. But then I think if I'm not here, then she doesn't have to worry about coming here and she doesn't like coming here. She gets anxious. She thinks that they're gonna rob us because our house has been broken into and robbed so many times.

We've just basically given up. [01:28:00] We're living in a different place now. It's closer in town where we have neighbors, but at the house that we lived at, we had been broken into four times. And you know, Vanessa doesn't wanna go out at night here because I was robbed at gunpoint and they took the car and it was night. And all of these things are things that I'm exposing her to living through by having her come back here.

I found my biological father's side through Facebook. They live in Canada and my father passed away while I was looking for them. I still haven't seen a picture of him yet, but I have hope that one day I will. [01:29:00] And I was doing my criminal rehabilitation to be able to go to Canada to meet them because I have four brothers and four sisters in Canada. But this whole COVID thing happened, and the lawyers haven't even answered my emails from them.

So, getting my US citizenship would mean a lot of things. I get to meet my sister, I get to go back to the States and be a part of, you know, if my parents don't wanna have anything to do with me, that's fine, but I still have my siblings and they still consider me their sister and I still consider them my sister, you know, and it would just mean to be able to be a mother to my child.

I don't wanna be a grandmother like this, you know, I don't want anything else to happen. And this is what, this is my, you know, hi, grandma loves you. No. I can't get in the car and drive up and help her on a weekend clean or go to have lunch. I just wanna go have lunch with her or go walk in the park or just spend time with her. You know?

It would mean me having my life back 'cause I really [01:30:00] feel like this is not my life. A lot of times I think I'm gonna wake up, but I can't.

Haley Radke: So, Kristopher Larson, the Executive Director of Adoptees for Justice. He's gonna come back and he is gonna give us a few things that we can do to help you and other adoptees like you.

Before we do that, you know, I just wanna give you one more opportunity. Like, what would you say to someone like me who is in Canada, there's lots of people listening in the United States. Like, what would you hope from us to share your story to impact this injustice for adoptees like yourself who don't have citizenship.

Anissa: Well, I wanna say reach out to your congressman. We need to bring this to light because a lot of people don't know that this is happening. I share this on Facebook and [01:31:00] even my friends on Facebook don't know I'm deported and don't know that I was adopted and didn't know that was possible. I asked them to reach out, send an email, share a post.

If you wanna get more involved, follow Adoptees for Justice on Facebook. They do Hill visits. They will go with you to speak to your Congressman, senator, whoever, they will go with you. You don't have to say a word, you just have to say, this sucks, and I have some people that have some information that you need to hear and I want this changed.

If you don't wanna do any of that, donate. Donate to help people have water, donate to help somebody with a medical bill. Because we're out here, we don't have food stamps, we don't have Medicaid, we don't have medical coverage. I'm a handicapped person and, you know, I'm good with the leg right now, but that came from donation, also my prosthetic leg. [01:32:00]

Just please do something. I mean, if you believe adoption is forever, or at least for this time here in this world, everybody should see this as an injustice. Doesn't matter if I broke the law or not, because biological children break the law all the time and get the second chance. We pay our time; we pay our price. And then we're released back into society hoping that, you know, we've learned a lesson.

So I ask everybody, even in Canada, you know, people in Canada know people in the US, or send an email as a Canadian, hey, I think this sucks, I don't think this is right. And the adoptee community, the domestic adoptees, I guess, I don't see their involvement and they might be involved, but I also ask them to please be involved, you know, help us because at the end of the day, if it affects one adoptee, [01:33:00] it should affect all of us.

I don't want my original birth certificate, but I send emails out to everybody. I go on a VPN and I send emails out for people to be able to access their original birth certificates, their OBCs, because I feel that that should be their right as an adult.

If I had known about cancer when I was a kid, would I have a leg now? You know, I put myself in those positions, so I ask everybody to please do something, and it's surprising the effect. We're seeing this today when we all stand together and when we all let our voices be heard. I'm not saying in a negative way, but in a good way, what can be done.

And I am very hopeful that, you know, once COVID and everything calms down, that we'll be able to get this bill, at least, voted on and passed.

Haley Radke: [01:34:00] I just, I don't even know what to say. I'm so grateful that you are willing to share your story with us. It's so powerful and just heart wrenching and, you know, I thank you for the emotional labor it takes, again, to share your story.

And I'm sure you've told it many times and I know it's gonna touch a lot of people's hearts, so I thank you and I really appreciate your calls to action. We're gonna hear a little bit more from Kristopher now about things we can do to help Adoptees for Justice.

Let's just talk a little bit more about Adoptees for Justice and what are some of the ways people can help. I mean, I think you can understand this is a critical issue. It really needs resolving. Now, I'm in Canada, but I know this impacts so many of my fellow adoptees in the States. And what are some of the ways we can help Adoptees for Justice get citizenship for all adoptees?

Kristopher Larsen: So one of the ways that citizens here can [01:35:00] help is by contacting your congressional member and showing support for the Adoptee Citizenship bill that is there.

Now we have bills in the House and in Congress for this. The best way to get information on this is to visit our website adopteesforjustice.org, which has a plethora of information on the bills themselves. But the key thing is getting constituents to call into those offices to show that support.

Now with our time of COVID, it's been challenging because we have to have a certain amount of co-sponsors to be able to move the bill, and our target number was 60. Going into COVID, I think we were right around 52, but now even during this time of COVID, we're up to 62 co-sponsors for the House, which we're pretty excited about.

We had met with our Senate and our House representatives for this bill, and this is something that they want to push this year to make sure that it gets passed. Next step is it actually working its way [01:36:00] through the immigration and subcommittee, which is where it has stalled before, and having supporters in those committees on the bill, it does make it easy to get through.

So the next step is to have that vote in the judiciary committee, and this is where we need a strong push for individuals to contact the representatives so that they will vote positively for this.

The other things that we also have going on is that we are supporting impacted adoptees. In other words, those adoptees that don't have citizenship and that do not get any type of stimulus during this time of COVID.

One of the reasons why that has been such a huge issue is that if you're a tax paying dollar like everybody else, then you should definitely be receiving that stimulus. But because you don't have your citizenship, then that automatically disqualifies you as a person to receive the stimulus.

Now, where that even affects the family members even more is that if they have a spouse that does qualify, it’s more than likely that spouse now does not qualify [01:37:00] because the adoptee didn't qualify. And so that has a chain reaction on things.

Or the deportees. Like I said, I've been fighting for people that are facing eviction now because they don't have support with people losing their jobs during this. And them not being a citizen of that nation, they're actually at the back of the line to even be able to be qualified to get a job. They don't receive any type of government support in that country itself, and so it makes it a lot more difficult.

But our website does have links on there for you to make a donation. We do have some different donation categories. One of them is a COVID relief fund where that money is specifically going towards helping individuals affected by COVID. We also have a legal fund because we also sponsor people for their citizenship paperwork that need it, that are considered low income, I guess.

And then we also have our operations costs because we do have to spend most of our time in Washington DC [01:38:00] advocating, or we have to fly to different states and meet with representatives in their home states to be able to provide this.

Last year, Adoptees for Justice was able to have 54 different events across the nation to be able to bring support for this bill and to get it to where it is now. And a lot of that was in part because of the donations that we received from members and also from organizations.

Haley Radke: Thanks for sharing that. That's really important to know. I just want your thoughts on this also. Adoptees for Justice seems to me to be very inclusive, and you're talking about citizenship for every single adoptee. No matter what. And my understanding is that there has been a bill or some bills that did not include all adoptees under that.

Can you talk a little bit about why it's so important for you to have this bill, that hopefully will eventually get passed, be inclusive for all adoptees?

Kristopher Larsen: Yeah. [01:39:00] The whole push for inclusion basically stems around the rights of a child, basically. When that child received their family and when they received that finalized order of adoption, right then they should also receive their citizenship.

That way they are granted every right and responsibility as an American citizen, just like a natural born child. When a child is born, they are a citizen. They receive all the rights as all their family members, and same with an adopted child. When a family adopts a child, there is no distinction generally between the natural born child and adopted child.

Like I said, I had three sisters and a brother. And not once have I ever heard them tell people that I was their adoptive brother. My parents never introduced me, this is my adoptive child. Those terms didn't exist because I was their child. Therefore, I should receive the same rights as their children. [01:40:00]

Now, the fact of criminality, people ask, well, why? Why should we let people that have committed crimes back in? It's not that you're letting people who committed crimes back in, you're letting citizens back in because this is something, once again, that they should have received as a child.

If you're a citizen, if your child later on in life, your natural born child later on in life commits a crime, do you deport them? Do you send them somewhere else? No. Once that person fulfills their legal obligations to the court systems, they have that chance to be citizens again. Our judiciary system now labels people coming out of incarceration as returning citizens. These individuals that have been deported should be also labeled as returning citizens 'cause that's exactly what they are.

It's very important that this bill is inclusive because previously it did leave off people that were adopted but didn't come in on adoption visas. One of the things that this bill does is remove the requirements of [01:41:00] having legal, permanent residency status. The requirement is that you came in on a valid visa, whether it's a student visa, humanitarian visas, adoption visas. As long as there's a valid visa and there's a finalized order of adoption, then you should have received your citizenship.

Haley Radke: Thank you. Thank you for educating me and all of us that are listening. I really appreciate that. The best place to find out more information about how you can help is going to adopteesforjustice.org. As Kristopher said earlier, and, you know, we're recording this in the time of COVID, so we mentioned that fundraiser to help adoptees without citizenship to receive some financial aid right now.

And if you're listening in future, I'm sure there's other things that they have put up on their website. Ways you can help, ways you can reach your representatives to really let them know how important this bill is to you. And yeah. I thank you so much, Kristopher, for telling us about this. I really [01:42:00] appreciate your time.

Wow, that was a huge topic. Very heavy. I think there's hope, there's hope at the end of it all, and especially with our action. One of the most moving things Anissa said, I don't know if this really spoke to you too, was how she talked about how she literally gets on a VPN to change her address to being in the United States so she can write in for adoptees to access their original birth certificates.

And I don't know why that was just so moving for me, you know, like she would do that for us. So, you know, isn't it the least we can do for her to write in to our representatives? And you know, even from Canada, I'm thinking about, oh my goodness, what can I do from here? It’s just mind boggling to me that this is still on the table. [01:43:00]

Anyway, usually I do a call to action and I do wanna thank all my monthly supporters, you know, without you, I wouldn't be able to do shows like this and bring up these issues. And so I'm just so grateful to you that you are keeping the show sustainable and going forward, and so thank you.

But today I really, if you do anything, please head over to the Adoptees for Justice website. I will have all of those things linked in the show notes, which you can find on adopteeson.com. And if you just click through on your podcast app, whatever you're listening to, you can find the links right there in your podcast app as well.

And do something that Kristopher challenged us to do, do something Anissa challenged us to do. I think this is a critical issue and just like all the heavy things that are going on right now, it's very easy for us to put our heads in the sand and just [01:44:00] pretend it's not happening and just be like, wow, that was a really sad story, and move on and do something else.

Please don't do that. Please go to their website, figure out who you need to email, who you need to call if you're able to financially donate to support their work, I would encourage you to do that. I just wanna thank Adoptees for Justice for trusting me with Anissa's story and with their organization’s story.

I really hope that our community can make an impact for Anissa and for the other adoptees who are without citizenship. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again soon.

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147 Anissa and Adoptees For Justice

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Adoptees On