JEFFERSON CITY • The Missouri Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by a Guatemalan woman seeking to overturn the adoption of her biological child by a couple from Carthage, Mo.
The woman, Encarnacion Romero, sought to challenge a Missouri Court of Appeals decision terminating her parental rights to the child who was adopted by Seth and Melinda Moser. The Mosers have raised the child, now 7, since he was a year old. Legal battles have gone on since 2008.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruling, issued Tuesday, means there are no more options for Romero in Missouri courts, said Joe Hensley, the Mosers’ attorney. Any further appeal of the adoption would have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, The Joplin Globe reported.
The child was 11 months old when Romero was arrested in May 2007 in an immigration raid at a poultry processing plant in Barry County. She left her child with her brother, who gave the baby to a sister. The sister left the baby with a Carthage couple who agreed to the adoption by the Mosers.
The mother’s parental rights were terminated because
she abandoned the child and made no attempt to maintain contact or provide for the boy during the two years she was incarcerated after being arrested on immigration violations.
Romero’s supporters argue that she lost custody because she is an immigrant in the country illegally.
Romero’s attorneys asked the state Supreme Court to hear their challenge of an appeals court decision handed down in October that terminated her parental rights and upheld the adoption. The appellate court ruled in a unanimous decision.
Bill Fleischaker, of Joplin, one of several attorneys voluntarily representing Romero, said there had been no decision on options or how to respond to the state Supreme Court ruling.
Post Dispatch____________________________
Several bleeding heart comments follow the article at the Post-Dispatch. I find it amusing that any would argue with a straight face that she lost custody
because she's illegal, given all the taxpayer-funded largesse currently being lavished on illegals.
