Three children who were kidnapped by their father and taken to Mexico four years ago have been returned to their mother in Las Vegas, officials said today.
The children -- who are now ages 10, 11 and 13 -- were abducted in October 1999 after the divorce of their parents, Natalie and Enrique Delgadillo, authorities said.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval's office became involved in the case after obtaining a felony arrest warrant for the father shortly after the children's abduction.
In the end, though, a web of local and federal agencies in the U.S. and as-yet unidentified sources of help in Mexico helped resolve the case.
"Somebody has been leaking information to the State Department for the last four years that has allowed the government to know exactly where the children were," said April Lavergne, of the Nevada Missing Children Clearinghouse, a division of the attorney general's office.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which works with the state department on such cases, had placed posters in Ensenada, the city where the children's father was believed to be hiding the children. An anonymous tipster would call from time to time with information about the children, Lavergne said.
In the end, though, a key factor in returning the children to U.S. soil was having the father finally agree to sign over custody to their mother in a Mexican court, Lavergne said.
Experts say international child abduction -- foreign-born spouses taking the couple's children to another country when the marriage ends -- is a growing trend and that prolonged cases like Delgadillo's are not uncommon.
Mexico is the country to which the highest number of U.S. children are abducted -- about 15 percent of the 1,100 incidents each year, the State Department said.
Despite national and international government efforts to address the problem, abduction experts say that parents on U.S. soil in these type of cases face a maze of false leads, rip-off artists, officials limited in their powers and a lack of reliable contacts in foreign countries.
An arrest warrant filed in Nevada, for example, is only useful if the parent who has abducted the child or children returns to the U.S. Even the State Department can do little if the country where the child or children are being kept does not cooperate.
In the Delgadillo case, the grandfather of the children is a police officer in Ensenada. He helped the father hide the children, and thwarted attempts to move forward on the case, Lavergne said.
The Nevada Missing Children Clearinghouse learned of the Delgadillo case in November 1999. In 2002, organization helped in the recovery of 31 children who had been abducted by parents.
The clearinghouse filed a Hague Treaty application with the State Department to obtain assistance with the recovery of the children. The Hague Treaty, formally known as the Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, was signed in 1980.
It acknowledges the problem of international child abduction and provides a civil means for return of children to their country of residence. Mexico is one of about 50 countries that has signed the Hague Treaty, but the treaty's effectiveness depends a great deal on cooperation between the U.S. and these other countries.
Assisted by the Virginia-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the State Department, Natalie Delgadillo flew from Las Vegas to Mexico on Oct. 22, where she reunited with her children, Sandoval said.
The felony arrest warrant remains active for the father.
"Nevada will not tolerate parents who unlawfully seek to detain or conceal their children from the other parent whether it be in or out of our state," Sandoval said.
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