A Chilean American man who discovered he was stolen from his mother as a baby and trafficked through an illegal adoption ring has reunited with his birth family more than three decades later.
Kyle Adler, 36, learned as an adult that he was one of thousands of children taken from poor Chilean families during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and adopted overseas through corrupt networks involving caregivers, officials, and adoption agencies.
After years searching for answers about his origins, Adler was connected with his biological mother, Ana Maria Navarrete, through DNA testing and the help of a Chilean nonprofit that reunites adoptees with their families.
Adler traveled from Miami to Santiago earlier this year to meet Navarrete for the first time since he was taken from her at just nine months old.
'I'm not just the son that you lost,' Adler told his biological mother during their reunion in Chile. 'I'm the son that you found. I'm back to being your son.'
'I'm so happy to finally be meeting him,' Navarrete told AP News. 'My dream has finally come true.'
The reunion marked the end of a years-long search after Adler uncovered the shocking truth about his adoption and the identity crisis that followed.
Adler was adopted by an American family in 1990 and raised in an affluent suburb outside Chicago. He said his adoptive parents, Mike and Connie Adler, likely had no idea the adoption was tied to a trafficking network.
'My parents didn't steal me,' Adler said. 'They saw me as who they wanted me to become, and there's a lot of love that was put into that.'
Navarrete said she was 19 and working nights at a fish shop in the coastal Chilean city of Coronel when her son disappeared. Unable to afford childcare, she paid a woman to care for the infant, whom she had named Marcos Antonio Navarrete.
But one day, Navarrete said the caregiver told her the baby had been taken by an American couple after a local priest arranged for him to be adopted because he supposedly 'needed a family.'
A police investigator later told her the disappearance may have been linked to a wider adoption trafficking ring involving judges, doctors, and government officials.
The Chilean government has estimated that more than 20,000 children may have been taken from families during the Pinochet era, with many targeted because they came from poor or Indigenous backgrounds.
Adler began investigating his background in 2017 after finding a Facebook group run by the nonprofit Nos Buscamos, which helps reunite adoptees with biological relatives. In 2022, he lost both his parents within quick succession of one another.
His reunion with Navarrete was also aided by Connecting Roots, an organization that assists adoptees in Chile through DNA testing, genealogy research, and translation support. A DNA test later confirmed Navarrete was his biological mother.
During the trip, Adler visited the hospital where he was born, recovered a copy of his original birth certificate, and met siblings he never knew existed. Back in Santiago, the pair looked through childhood photographs and keepsakes Adler brought from the US, including a pair of baby shoes his adoptive parents had saved.
Because Adler does not speak Spanish, translators and translation apps helped the pair communicate throughout the trip.
Navarrete admitted the reunion also reopened decades of trauma. 'It took me so long to find him,' she said. 'And then to spend a week together only to have him leave. It's like I found him but I've now lost him all over again.'
Adler said he hopes the reunion will help both of them heal. 'It's been so eye-opening to see who my people are,' he said. 'I feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care. It's nice to have a family again.'
