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MIAMI — <\/span>Kyle Adler\u2019s discovery that he was stolen from his Chilean mother as a baby came as a shock, sparking an identity crisis that lasted years and led to a reunion with his biological mother earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been so eye-opening to see who my people are,\u201d Adler said. \u201cI feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care \u2014 it\u2019s nice to have a family again.\u201d<\/p>\n Adopted by an American family when he was 9 months old, the 36-year-old is one of thousands of children who were stolen from Chilean families during the 17-year dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and among hundreds who have been reunited with their birth families thanks to DNA tracing and organizations that are helping Chilean adoptees investigate their pasts. Others are also working toward justice for the families ripped apart.<\/p>\n The American family that adopted Adler in 1990 raised him in an affluent Chicago suburb.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents didn\u2019t steal me; they didn\u2019t name me Kyle out of malice. They saw me as who they wanted me to become, and there\u2019s a lot of love that was put into that,\u201d Adler said of his adoptive parents Mike and Connie Adler. Adler believes neither of them knew the circumstances surrounding his adoption. He said neither were initially supportive of his decision to find his birth mother before they died in 2022.<\/p>\n He grew up to be an overachiever who in adulthood wanted more meaning to his life, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly now I found myself where I didn\u2019t know what to do. I knew I was adopted and at that point, I was just like, I need to find my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n Adler\u2019s biological mother, Ana Maria Navarrete, was a 19-year-old single parent working nights at a fish shop in the seaside city of Coronel, some 533 kilometers (331 miles) south of the capital. She had named him Marcos Antonio Navarrete.<\/p>\n She could only afford a room for herself, so she hired a woman who took Adler into her home as a baby and looked after him. Navarrete told The Associated Press she visited him whenever she was not working. <\/p>\n One day, the caregiver told her he was taken by an American couple after a local priest made arrangements for a baby \u201cin need of a family.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd she let them have him,\u201d Navarrete told AP, furious and ashamed. The AP could not independently verify all the details of what occurred.<\/p>\n A police investigator told her the baby had likely been taken as part of a wide-reaching counterfeit adoption network that involved adoption agencies, immigration officials, judges, nurses and even doctors.<\/p>\n No one was held accountable, Navarrete said, and \u201cthose years afterward were some of the worst years of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n Lacking family support, she said she eventually surrendered the idea she would get her son back.<\/p>\n \u201cJustice for the poor did not exist in Chile and it still does not,\u201d said Constanza Del Rio, founder and executive director of Nos Buscamos, a nonprofit organization with online data for thousands of cases. The government estimates more than 20,000 children were stolen from families. <\/p>\n Children of the poor and Indigenous populations were targeted during the Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1990, said Jimmy Lippert Thyden Gonz\u00e1lez, who was also illegally adopted and became a human rights lawyer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an effort to eliminate and eradicate the poor class. It was a way of eradicating the Indigenous population, the uneducated population,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n In early 2017, Adler came across the Nos Buscamos Facebook group while Googling the term \u201cChilean birth mom search\u201d online, he said. And that\u2019s when he messaged Del Rio.<\/p>\n Within three months, Del Rio had confirmed Adler’s origin story and organized a virtual reunion.<\/p>\n Initially, Adler felt crushed to find out he was adopted illegally, sending him into an identity crisis that led to years of therapy.<\/p>\n Then last year, Adler finally felt ready for answers.<\/p>\n A DNA test provided by genealogy platform MyHeritage, a global family history company based in Israel, confirmed a match between Adler and 56-year-old Navarrete of Santiago and \u201cmade it official,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n MyHeritage partners with both Nos Buscamos and Connecting Roots, and other nonprofits doing similar work, to provide free at-home DNA testing kits for distribution to Chilean adoptees and suspected victims of child trafficking.<\/p>\n Tyler Graf, the founder and CEO of Connecting Roots, traveled with Adler. <\/p>\n Graf had also reunited with his birth mother Hilda Quezada Godoy decades after he was taken from her, and said it is now his mission to track others taken from families in Chile.<\/p>\n \u201cNow it\u2019s time to mend these families and bring everyone back home so they can see where they came from,\u201d Graf told the AP.<\/p>\n Human rights lawyer Lippert Thyden Gonz\u00e1lez sued the Chilean government three years ago and hopes to lead the fight all the way to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He also founded the organization Grafting Hope, a nonprofit focused on educating U.S. lawmakers and fighting for the rights of survivors of counterfeit adoptions. <\/p>\n The Chilean government didn\u2019t immediately respond to several messages seeking comment from AP.<\/p>\n \u201cI want justice. Not just for me, but also for him because I don\u2019t know the type of life he had,\u201d Navarrete told AP days after reuniting with her son.<\/p>\n Navarrete is working with a law firm and hopes those involved will get jail-time. <\/p>\n \u201cMy birth mom\u2019s just been wanting me to be alive,\u201d Adler said ahead of boarding the flight from Miami in February. <\/p>\n The two were reunited two days after her 56th birthday on Valentine\u2019s Day and an AP team was with them in Miami and Chile.<\/p>\n Tears flowed as Adler exited the international arrivals gate in Chile. Both mother and son were wearing white as Navarrete ran to embrace him. The tall, dark-haired son bent over to bury his face in his mother’s hair. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so happy to be finally meeting him, my dream has finally come true,\u201d Navarrete said. <\/p>\n The emotional reunion led to a fruitful week together visiting the beach in Coronel, the hospital where Adler was born and the house where he was taken from. They recovered a copy of his original birth certificate, and he met one of his four siblings. In Miami, he had previously met another sister and her daughter.<\/p>\n Back in Santiago, the two enjoyed keepsakes Adler brought with him as gifts: A framed graduation diploma, childhood photographs and a pair of baby shoes his adoptive parents had kept.<\/p>\n Adler is not a Spanish speaker so Connecting Roots provided a translator. These days, translation apps help them continue the conversation.<\/p>\n Navarrete said the time spent with her son was joyful but it also made her relive much of the pain of the past 35 years. <\/p>\n \u201cIt took me so long to find him. And then to spend a week together only to have him leave,\u201d Navarrete said amid tears, \u201cit’s like I found him but I’ve now lost him all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she’s hopeful the family will reunite in December. For Adler, the road to forgiveness continues but he hopes Navarrete is able to let go of the trauma. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not just the son that you lost, I\u2019m the son that you found. I\u2019m back to being your son,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n