Jeremy D. Morley
It seems appropriate at this time to reiterate the
fact that this country has no exit controls, with minimal exceptions.
We try to control who comes in to this country, but
we should also control who goes out. Especially if the people who are being
taken out are U.S. citizen children who are being abducted overseas.
Below is an article I wrote a few years ago about
our successful and lucky work in preventing an international abduction already
in progress.
Are the powers-that-be in our country finally ready
to secure our borders in ways that will be meaningful to U.S. citizens checking
people as they exit the United States?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
To the overwhelming elation and relief of our client, a
terrified and panic-stricken Chinese mother, we succeeded recently in having a
baby intercepted at an airport exit gate as his father was about to abduct him
from the United States to India.
Mother’s joy at being reunited with her lost child capped our
office’s relentless two-week search.
The family – a Chinese mother, her American husband and their
dual national child – were living in China. After an argument between the
spouses, the father grabbed the child and threatened to take him to the States.
The Chinese police and then the Hong Kong police were completely unhelpful. The
father then took the baby to an undisclosed location in the United States. That
is when the mother called us from China, desperately scared and frantic.
We got word that the father was in California and with the help
of local counsel and others there we secured an ex parte temporary custody
order and restraining order in favor of our client.
We assisted the mother to obtain an emergency visa allowing her
to fly to the States.
We then learned that the father was in Arizona near the Mexican
border and we sought emergency police assistance there.
We then received some information that the father was ticketed
for a flight to India. We suspected that India had been chosen because, as we
have long warned, India is a well-recognized haven for international child
abduction.
Just minutes before the plane left we succeeded in having the
police at LAX pick up the child at the departure gate for the flight to India.
And just a few minutes later the child was safely in our
ecstatic client’s arms.
The successful outcome resulted from enormous emergency effort
in working with courts, police forces across the country, the State Department
and other agencies.
It was frustrating, expensive and extremely nail-biting, most
especially for the distraught mother.
And we were very lucky.
But the entire process was completely unnecessary.
If the United States would check who leaves this country we
could prevent international child abductions.
Unlike most other countries the United States has no exit
controls (with minimal exceptions). Laws that require the United States to
impose such controls have never been effectuated.
The measures that exist in the United States to prevent and
deter international child abduction are minimal to nonexistent. Those laws that
do exist are extremely hard to implement. Court orders barring cross-border
travel are routinely violated. Laws that require dual nationals, including
children, to possess a U.S. passport when leaving the U.S. are ignored. Amber
alert programs are reserved for the most outrageous death-threat type of cases.
Police forces don’t want to handle matters that concern child custody issues.
Even when an abduction is clearly in progress the resources that
are available to assist parents are negligible.
We control who enters this country but we leave the doors wide
open for any to leave – and to take whoever they wish with them, whether that
is a child or anyone else.