Beaverton couple adopts Haitian toddler

BEAVERTON, Ore. – In the final anxious moments before a group of Haitian orphans joined their adoptive American families Friday morning, only a thin wall of sliding panels kept tearful parents from wide-eyed children.  

Those seconds ticked by slowly for a Beaverton man holding his 20-month-old son, Samuel, waiting to place the boy into the arms of his new mother. Samuel was being housed in an orphanage near the epicenter of the quake as the Wilkins made their way through the adoption process over the past two years.

Now, on the day when Samuel finally comes to the U.S., Joe Wilkins must leave his wife behind in Miami and head to Haiti in search of the boy they had last seen two weeks before the earthquake. For 10 hours, his wife – and Samuel's new mother – Jill Wilkins waited at the airport, achingly close to her son but not able to see him.  

The Wilkins' family journey was like that of so many of those gathered in a conference room at Miami International Airport: a will to adopt, the discovery of Haiti's needy babes, character-building bureaucratic tangles, patience, hope, determination and then, after more than a year and sometimes as long as two, a child to call your own.  

Now, 12 days after the catastrophic earthquake devastated parts of Haiti, the kids were close enough to hear. 

The U.S. government agreed to fast-track humanitarian refugee visas for 81 children from God's Littlest Angels orphanage in a Haitian valley. On Friday, the children had waved goodbye to the green-walled orphanage for their first airplane ride and trip to the United States.

Once on the ground in Miami, the children began a final arduous 8-hour crawl through immigration screening.  In the video above, KATU Reporter Susan Harding talks by phone with the Wilkins family who are settling in with their new son, Samuel, in a Miami hotel, resting and bonding until their return home to Beaverton later this week.

This adoption may have come just in time for the Wilkins. After urging from child advocates at the Joint Council on International Children Services, CNN is reporting that all out-of-country adoptions now must be approved by the Haitian government.

"Charities and aid groups are concerned about the danger of child trafficking after the earthquake if the children are allowed to be adopted without proper documentation," Tom Difilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children Services, told CNN.