ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

It’s the title U.S. District Judge John Ross used last week in his order for a case between Luke’s parents — Adam and Jill Trower — and the federal government.

The ruling doesn’t end Luke’s limbo but should shorten it. The judge determined that the Trowers’ adoption of Luke is — and always has been — valid.

That doesn’t make up for the fact that Luke turned 5 in an orphanage in the Democratic Republic of Congo — more than four years after his parents, who live in Pike County, got a judge in that country to sign off on adoption papers.

As an infant, Luke had been found near a trash heap in Kinshasha. I started writing about the Trowers’ attempts to adopt Luke a couple of years after that, not long before they filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government because it was blocking the adoption.

On one hand, the tale is complicated, as foreign adoptions often are. Congo is a war-torn country, and there have been questions about fraud in some adoptions there. Two federal agencies — the State Department and the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) — are involved in various elements of such adoptions.

In 2016, Congo enacted legislation to suspend foreign adoptions. But, similar to what so often happens in the U.S., the legislative intent was never quite followed through by the other branches of government.

The simple part of the story is this: the Trowers in 2018 had approval from USCIS to seek the adoption. The Trowers had a friend who volunteered for a nonprofit called the Libota Project, which raises money for children in orphanages in Congo.

A judge in Congo approved the adoption. Court records showed no fraud in any element of the adoption.

But then the State Department stepped in and a series of bureaucratic and communication issues stalled everything. The Trowers eventually sued. In the meantime, a child who had been found playing near trash was stuck in an orphanage, only able to talk to his new parents and sister, Nora, in video discussions held on holidays and special occasions.

The last Saturday in January was one of those special occasions. “It was a tough day,� Adam told me of his son’s birthday.

Because Luke was abandoned as an infant, no one knows what day he was born; the Trowers settled on Jan. 28. A couple of weeks ago, they sent the orphanage money so Luke could have a birthday cake and a special meal.

“Here’s this child who we adopted when he was a year old, and now he’s turned 5 and he’s never been here,� Adam says.

The Trowers are pleased the judge agreed their adoption was legal, but there is lingering anger over the commitment the federal government showed to blocking the adoption, even with the facts surrounding it agreed to in court.

In one filing last year, for instance, the government criticized the Trowers for speaking to me and other reporters, suggesting they were using their First Amendment rights to sway the judge. And despite evidence that the biggest failure was the inability of the State Department and USCIS to communicate, the government early on refused to settle so the Trowers and Luke could unite.

“The government was supposed to be our partner, but they were basically taking pot shots at us,� Adam says. “Anyone who has heard our story just can’t believe it’s true. What we were doing was just telling our story so that other parents don’t have to go through this.�

The next chapter of The Road to Limbo was written on Tuesday. Forced to come to the table by the judge’s ruling, the agencies involved in the lawsuit signed an agreement with the Trowers. The reunification of Luke and his family can now proceed, with the government as the willing partner it was supposed to be from the beginning.

The next step is for Luke to get a visa, and then final permission from Congo to leave the country.

“To be this close to having him home seems almost surreal,� Adam says. “It has been such a long, difficult struggle that times you thought it would never end. Nearly four years after the original adoption order, the judge’s ruling was confirmation of what we believed all along: Luke is our son.�