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Lawyer In Illicit Marshallese Adoption Scheme Now Accused Of Paying Texas Inmates For Babies
Jody Hall previously arranged for pregnant women to fly from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. through Honolulu in violation of international law. It's unclear if this new investigation will examine those actions as well as the jail accusations.
A lawyer who was a subject of a Civil Beat investigation in 2019 into an illegal adoption pipeline from the Marshall Islands through Honolulu has been accused of paying pregnant women at a Texas jail to place their babies for adoption.
Jody Hall was paying “multiple” inmates in Tarrant County, Texas to give up their unborn children in adoptions through her agency, Adoptions International, according to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.
Hall was arrested on July 23 at her home in Kyle, south of Austin, on the charge of sale or purchase of a child — a third-degree felony — according to an online booking record. She was released the same day on a $50,000 bond. The jail where she is accused of paying for babies is in Fort Worth, about a three-hour drive to the north of her home.
Hall’s agency is still in good standing with the state of Texas, according to an online database, and she retains her license to practice law. Hall did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The arrest was apparently part of a broader investigation into Hall’s adoption business. That investigation “concerning unethical adoption practices” began on May 28 and is still underway, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said.
It’s unclear if that investigation includes her brokering of illicit adoptions involving birth mothers living in the Marshall Islands. In 2019, Civil Beat identified Hall as one of several lawyers illegally arranging for such adoptions.
Hall said in communications with potential clients that she was flying birth mothers from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. mainland through Honolulu. A treaty between the two nations bars such transactions.
In the jail inmate case in Texas, Hall discussed monetary agreements in texts and deposited money into the inmate’s commissary accounts and paid for time on their jail-issued tablets, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
“Those communications showed Hall explain that she will send adoption packets and will continue to provide support for the inmates presuming they do not scam her,” according to the affidavit.
These payments were illegal under Texas law, the affidavit says, because the jail was providing everything the women needed for their pregnancies, including health care, and so could not be justified as necessary.
When one inmate decided to keep her baby, Hall responded in a text, “Amber you’re in jail and a drug addict … You are a scammer and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case all about how this family supported you since November and you scammed them WITH THE HELP OF YOUR BOYFRIEND.”
In another case, one inmate provided Hall with the name of another inmate who was pregnant.
Hall later texted the pregnant inmate, according to the affidavit.
“If you have family members who can take the child, that is great,” she wrote. “Or if you will be out of jail by the time the child is born, that is great too. But if you still won’t be in a position to raise a child … we can help you even when your are not in jail.”
Hall offered to put $100 a week on the inmate’s “books.” At another point she promised $2,500 “when you get out,” the affidavit says, or would make the weekly payments to the inmate accounts.
Hall warned the woman to tell the nurses at the hospital where she delivered that she was planning to give up the child for adoption because otherwise child welfare workers would be called.
“I can get them to close their case if I know you have told the social worker and nurses that you have an adoption plan,” Hall texted, according to the affidavit.
In 2019, while arranging Marshallese adoptions, Hall told would-be adoptive parents that the adoption fee would include payments to “helpers in Honolulu” who would pick up the Marshallese woman and her baby at the airport and drive them to a hotel to await the flight to the mainland.
In one text, Hall told a client that “it’s easier to control” the birth mothers flown from the Marshall Islands, compared to Marshallese women already in Arkansas, “because we buy the tickets. That way they can’t change the tickets. We placed 3 in the past 3 weeks.”
One client told Civil Beat that Hall offered to match her with a birth mother living in the Marshall Islands, but that she would have to cover the airfare. Another told a similar story — after an agreement with a woman already in the U.S. fell through, Hall offered a baby born in the Marshall Islands.
“They fly from the M.I. to Hawaii and then to Dallas,” Hall texted the client.
Hall worked with a well-known adoption fixer named Justin Aine, who in 2019 was charged in the Marshall Islands with human trafficking. Aine left the Marshall Islands after being charged and was seen soon after in Arkansas, the home of a large Marshallese population, where he was known to be an adoption facilitator.
Five days after Civil Beat reported on Hall’s activities, an accreditation agency suspended her from continuing to do international adoptions. Two months later, that agency — the Intercountry Adoption Accreditation and Maintenance Entity — canceled Hall’s accreditation for failing to comply with standards. IAAME is the only agency authorized by the federal government to screen international agencies, as required by law.
Adoptions of children from the Marshall Islands have long been prone to exploitation. The practice of permanently severing a parent’s relationship to a child, common in the U.S. and other Western countries, is virtually unknown in the Marshall Islands.
Instead, it’s common for children to live in another household for a while and then return to their birth parents. Marshallese birth mothers have said they did not understand the implications of giving up their children for adoption in the U.S. and were devastated to find that they would never see them again.
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