Kyle Adler was 9 months old when he was flown from Chile to the United States and adopted by a family in an affluent Chicago suburb. He grew up unaware that his birth had been severed from his original family through what the Associated Press describes as a systematic illegal-adoption network that operated during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Adler’s discovery of the truth, years later, threw him into an identity crisis that he said lasted for years. This year, with the help of organizations that use DNA databases and international records to trace stolen children, he traveled to South America to meet his biological mother for the first time since infancy.
“It’s been so eye-opening to see who my people are,” Adler told the AP. “I feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care — it’s nice to have a family again.”
The AP reported that thousands of children were removed from Chilean parents — often poor, indigenous, or politically suspect — and placed with families in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere under the Pinochet regime. Some were simply taken from hospitals; others were given up under pressure or through fraudulent paperwork. The forced removals are now recognized as a form of state‑sponsored child trafficking.
A network of adoptee‑led groups, including the organization Nos Buscamos (“We Search for Ourselves”), has emerged to help survivors find their birth families. Constanza Del Rio, one of the founders of Nos Buscamos, has worked to match adoptees with Chilean relatives through genetic testing, according to the Associated Press. The effort has connected hundreds of adoptees with their biological families, though an unknown number of others remain unaware of their origins.
Advocates are also pressing Chilean and U.S. authorities to investigate the adoption network that operated with the knowledge of state officials. Some families are seeking legal recognition of what was done to them, while adoptees like Adler are navigating a new, often fragile, bond with the families they never knew.
Adler’s reunion earlier this year is part of a broader reckoning with the human‑rights abuses of the Pinochet era, whose legacy still shapes the lives of Chileans at home and abroad.