Trafficking of 4 would-be surrogate mothers foiled

Immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) and other ports are on alert for women leaving the country to serve as surrogate mothers for foreign couples.

This follows the interception on the first night of the New Year of four women bound for Cambodia who admitted they had signed a contract with a foreign recruiter who promised to pay each of them $8,700 to act as surrogate mothers, according to an airport immigration officer.

In his report on Monday to Bureau of Immigration (BI) commissioner Jaime Morente, port operations division chief Red Mariñas said it was the first time his unit had encountered this mode of human trafficking.

“With this interception, the BI was able to expose and prove the existence of another modern form of human trafficking, which is international commercial surrogacy,” Mariñas said in his report.

Mariñas said the four women and their female escort were stopped from boarding their flight to Cambodia via Bangkok, Thailand, on Sunday night after they were intercepted at the Naia Terminal 1 immigration counter.

Mariñas said that each woman will receive $200 after she is artificially inseminated and $500, around nine to ten weeks later, once the fetal heartbeat is detected.

The remaining balance of $8,000 will be paid over her nine-month pregnancy until the baby is born and turned over to the adoptive parents, Mariñas said, quoting statements from the women.

“This is a new human trafficking modus operandi that preys on our women enticed to bear children of strangers for a fee because of their poverty,” Morente said.

Morente said the women were told that their babies will be fathered by a German, a Nigerian, an Australian, and a Chinese.

A surrogate mother is one who bears a child for another woman, either from her egg fertilized by the other woman’s partner, or from a fertilized egg from the other woman implanted in her uterus.

Mariñas said the women received a “final briefing” in Makati City from the foreign recruiter a day before their scheduled departure. The recruiter shouldered their travel expenses, accommodations, meals, and allowances, he said.

“The intercepted passengers also divulged that a second batch of surrogate mothers was also preparing for departure,” Mariñas said.

BI officers in all ports of exit were placed on alert to monitor the human smuggling syndicate’s activities and to stop the departure of the supposed second batch of women being trafficked as surrogate mothers.

The women’s escort was turned over to the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation for the possible filing of a human trafficking charge against her.

Cambodia, which recently banned commercial surrogacy, currently has the biggest foreign surrogacy market. —WITH A REPORT FROM JULIE M. AURELIO