Not much has changed for Jennifer Haynes, 27, in the nine months that she has lived in Mumbai. But the one thing she really wants is her children. In July last year, Haynes was deported to India because the Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA) had left her citizenship formalities incomplete at the time of her adoption in 1989, she alleged.
Jennifer, who is put up in a home for women in Chembur, said that she didn’t do much all day. “I’m trying to get a job in a call centre because I can speak very good English, but I have no documents to prove who I am,” Haynes told DNA.
She said that she wanted to work and earn money to be able to rent a place of her own so that she could bring her children — Kadafi, 5, and Kanassa, 4 — to India until her way to go back to the USA is cleared.
“My family sends me money from the USA but it’s not much,” Haynes said. She said that the only job that she had been offered was of a house maid. “I don’t want to do that because I am educated enough to get a better job.”
Born in Mumbai, Haynes was adopted by US nationals, Edward and Melissa Hancox, and flown to USA in November 1989. However, she claimed that she was sexually abused as a child in her first foster home in Georgia and then changed 50 different homes, in many of which, she continued to be abused.
Haynes was convicted in 2001 and 2004 for illegal possession of cocaine by the US department of justice. However, the Board of Immigration Appeals deported her to India in 2008 claiming that her citizenship formalities were left incomplete at the time of her adoption. “There are so many times that I just want to break-down, but I’m just taking one day at a time hoping that I will get to see my children soon,” Haynes said.
