MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US citizen taken during Pinochet dictatorship reunited with Chilean mother after 35 years

Adler, 36, was given up for illegal adoption in 1990 to a US couple who raised him in an affluent suburb of Chicago

US citizen Kyle Adler, taken as a nine-month-old baby during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, was reunited this year with his biological mother, Chilean national Ana María Navarrete, thirty-five years after the forced separation. The reunion, which took place on Valentine's Day at Santiago airport and was documented by the Associated Press news agency, illustrates the scale of a network of fraudulent adoptions that during the Chilean military regime (1973-1990) took more than twenty thousand children from poor and indigenous families, according to official estimates.

Adler, 36, was given up for illegal adoption in 1990 to a US couple who raised him in an affluent suburb of Chicago. His biological mother, then 19 and without the resources to raise him alone, worked night shifts at a fishmonger in the coastal city of Coronel. Navarrete entrusted the baby's care to a woman who, she later recounted, handed him over to the US couple through the intervention of a local priest. “I am so happy to finally meet him, my dream came true,” Navarrete said following the reunion. Subsequent police investigations confirmed that the case was part of a fraudulent adoption network involving agencies, public officials, judges, nurses, and doctors. None of those responsible has been prosecuted.

The search began in 2017, when Adler located online the non-governmental organization Nos Buscamos, founded by Constanza del Río to assist those adopted during the dictatorship in tracing their origins. Confirmation of the family link came through a DNA test conducted by the genealogy platform MyHeritage in 2025. During the visit to Chile, Adler met his siblings, recovered his original birth certificate, and walked with his mother along the Coronel beach, the hospital where he was born, and the home from which he was taken. The US citizen, who does not speak Spanish, communicated with his biological family through interpreters and digital applications.

Adler's case has gained international visibility thanks to the work of Chilean non-governmental organizations. “Justice for poor people in Chile does not exist; it still does not exist,” Del Río said, attributing the persistent impunity to the economic and ethnic profile of the victim families. Lawyer Jimmy Lippert Thyden González, also illegally adopted and now resident in the United States, is leading a lawsuit against the Chilean State over the events. “It was an attempt to eradicate the poor class and the indigenous population,” the lawyer said of the systematic scheme. Adler was accompanied on the trip by Tyler Graf, founder and chief executive of the organization Connecting Roots, who was also separated from his biological Chilean mother as a baby. Navarrete, assisted by a Chilean law firm, has filed a formal request for justice seeking criminal sentences for those responsible for the scheme.

Kyle Adler descubrió que fue víctima de adopciones ilegales durante la dictadura de Pinochet y, tras años de búsqueda y una prueba de ADN, logró abrazar a su madre biológica por primera vez pic.twitter.com/aNcPXSclhx

— EL PAÍS Chile (@elpais_chile) May 31, 2026