Singapore couple in agonising wait over adopted son linked to Indonesia trafficking case

A Singaporean couple say they are caught in an agonising, touch-and-go wait to learn whether they will be allowed to keep the son they adopted from Indonesia, after being told he may have been trafficked into the country.

David and Ally, speaking to the BBC on condition of anonymity, adopted a baby boy they call Marcus.

"For me it was love at first sight," David said of the moment he first saw him during a video call arranged by an adoption agency.

The couple had struggled for years to have children after Ally suffered several miscarriages. Facing a long wait for a Singaporean child, with one adoption agency giving them a queue number of 142, they turned to an agency specialising in Indonesian adoptions and paid tens of thousands of dollars in fees.

Marcus was brought to Singapore within months, and his adoption was approved swiftly.

The final step, an application for his citizenship, should have been routine. Instead, immigration officials told the couple it had been suspended, and that Marcus had possibly been trafficked.

"That's when I burst," David said, adding that he felt Singaporean authorities should have detected any problems during the approval process. "Didn't you do your due diligence? You did all the checks, right? They could not answer us."

David and Ally have not received official confirmation that Marcus is among the allegedly trafficked babies. Court documents reviewed separately, however, list his Indonesian name among the infants linked to the case, with one defendant named as his biological mother in the adoption papers.

Background: how the case emerged

The trafficking network was first exposed in April 2025, after a parent filed a police report alleging their baby had been abducted following contact with an online adoption group.

The report triggered an investigation by West Java Police, which led to the arrest of 24 suspects across West Java, Banten and West Kalimantan. Officers said the group operated a coordinated system of recruiters, carers, forgers and transporters, and that some babies were rescued while others had already been sent abroad.

Nineteen of those arrested, comprising 18 women and one man, are now on trial at the Bandung District Court, before a panel of judges led by Gatot Ardian Agustriono. The prosecution team, headed by Sukanda, opened its case on Tuesday, 7 April 2026, and the trial resumed on 14 April 2026 for witness examination.

Prosecutors allege the network was led by a woman named Lie Siu Luan, also known by the aliases Lily, Popo and Ai, who is accused of coordinating the procurement of babies for overseas adoption between 2023 and 2025.

According to the indictment, a Singaporean contact identified only as Petter approached Lie Siu Luan in 2023 seeking help sourcing infants, promising around US$18,000 (S$18,000; approximately Rp204 million) per baby.

Other defendants were allegedly assigned specific roles: an agent cluster led by Siu Ha handled document forgery and the recruitment of "fake parents"; intermediaries including Maryani, Yenti and Yenni arranged placements and temporary care; and a separate group managed transport routes from Jakarta to West Kalimantan and onward overseas.

Prosecutors allege at least 34 babies were trafficked in total, with at least 10 to 12 sent to Singapore. Infants were allegedly held in Pontianak, where hired carers looked after them while forged birth certificates, family cards and passports naming fictitious parents were prepared.

The defendants face charges under Indonesia's Criminal Code and Law No. 21 of 2007 on the Eradication of Human Trafficking, carrying possible sentences of up to 15 years.

Singapore's public statement

Singapore's first substantive public comment on the case was a joint statement issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) on 9 January 2026.

The statement said the two ministries were "aware of the allegations concerning babies being trafficked from Indonesia into Singapore for adoption" and were "working closely with our Indonesian counterparts to review these allegations."

It said the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and MSF had been in contact with the Indonesia National Police (INP) and Indonesia's Ministry of Social Affairs since an earlier request from the INP in September 2025, to verify the circumstances of children brought into Singapore for adoption. SPF said it had also been assisting Indonesian investigators.

On the adoptive families, the statement said MSF and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) had been "engaging the affected adoptive parents to explain the situation to them," and acknowledged "some delays in the processing of citizenship applications for the children." It pointed affected families to Social Service Offices for financial support in the interim.

Beyond this statement, the BBC's specific questions to MHA on whether it was investigating the Singaporean adoption agency that handled Marcus's adoption, or Lie Siu Luan's alleged local collaborators, went unanswered, with the ministry citing the ongoing Indonesian proceedings. MSF likewise did not respond to the BBC's questions on how it verifies the origins of children entering Singapore for adoption, referring back to the same statement.

Parliament presses for a timeline

The case has been raised repeatedly in Singapore's Parliament. On 14 January 2026, Sylvia Lim, Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC, asked the Minister for Social and Family Development how many approved adoptions were under review, how affected families could obtain clarity expeditiously, and whether interim assistance would be extended to families whose adoptees had not yet obtained citizenship.

Goh Pei Ming, Minister of State for Social and Family Development, replying on the minister's behalf, said investigations by Indonesian authorities were underway and that Singapore was "working closely with our Indonesian counterparts to review these allegations." He said MSF was "unable to comment on the number of cases currently under review at this stage."

Pressing further, Lim noted that some of her constituents had already cared for their adopted children for more than a year, and described the uncertainty as "a torture to them."

She asked whether the authorities could indicate a timeline in months or years, whether MSF or its partner agencies could have uncovered suspicious circumstances before the adoption orders were made, and whether affected families could be granted an exception to incur child-raising expenses on a Singapore-citizen basis while citizenship remained pending.

Goh said MSF was "unable to comment on a timeline at this juncture," but that the ministry was trying to proceed "as expeditiously as possible." On due diligence, he said adoption agencies operate on a commercial basis and that "the onus is on adoptive parents to try their best and ensure that children are identified, matched and placed in accordance with the prevailing laws" of both Singapore and the child's country of origin.

On the separation between the adoption and citizenship processes, Goh explained that adoption establishes the legal parent-child relationship based on the child's welfare, while citizenship is assessed separately on immigration grounds, and can take up to 12 months.

He said prospective adoptive parents are informed during the social investigation process that "the granting of citizenship is not automatic following the adoption order," though he added that MSF would assess financial assistance requests from affected families on a case-by-case basis.

When Lim asked directly whether nothing more could have been done to prevent the situation, Goh clarified that agencies are bound by guidelines on due diligence, and that any agency found to have knowingly brought in children of "unknown and suspicious origin" would be "taken to task."

He added, however, that in some cases irregularities may originate in the country of origin without the knowledge of agencies in Singapore, and said he did not wish to comment further while the case remained under investigation.

Written questions on checks and information-sharing

The case resurfaced in written parliamentary questions in the weeks that followed.

On 3 February 2026, West Coast–Jurong West GRC MP Cassandra Lee asked the Minister for Social and Family Development whether the government was considering measures to help adoption agencies and families conduct due diligence before an adoption is processed.

Masagos Zulkifli, Minister for Social and Family Development, replied that Singapore agencies were working closely with Indonesian authorities on the alleged trafficking cases, and that MSF would review whether existing adoption processes should be enhanced "when the facts are clearer."

He said any changes would take "a calibrated and proportionate approach," noting that more stringent checks could lengthen processing times, render some overseas adoptions infeasible, or unfairly affect the majority of adoptions where there was no indication of illegality.

On 6 March 2026, Sengkang GRC MP He Ting Ru asked the Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs about protocols for real-time information-sharing with foreign authorities on suspected child trafficking syndicates linked to Singapore adoptions, how many joint operations or information requests had occurred in the past five years, and whether upstream measures such as pre-clearance checks and source-country probes would be strengthened.

K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs, said the Singapore Police Force maintains close ties with foreign counterparts and exchanges information on transnational crime both bilaterally and through bodies such as Interpol.

He confirmed that, aside from the INP's September 2025 request, the SPF had "not been requested to participate in any joint operation nor received any information request from any other foreign counterpart relating to child trafficking syndicates linked to adoptions in Singapore in the last five years." He referred questions on adoption process reviews back to MSF's earlier written reply.

What happens next

The fate of the children involved remains unresolved. Some Indonesian officials and activists argue that, as a matter of principle, they should be returned to their biological parents, with one police official telling the BBC it was a matter "of Indonesia's national pride."

Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesperson, Yvonne Mewengkang, said any decision would prioritise "child protection based on the principle of the best interests of the child."

Jeremy Heng, a senior clinical psychologist with the Singapore Children's Society, said repeated disruptions early in a child's life could "negatively affect brain development, emotional regulation, learning and attachment security," along with heightened risks of trauma-related symptoms.

For David and Ally, the prospect of losing Marcus after years of raising him remains their greatest fear. "We will go to whatever lengths we can legally abide to, to keep our child," David said, adding that he would seek to adopt Marcus lawfully should he be required to return to Indonesia. "I will not give up on him," he said. "Any parent would fight till the end."