Man raises funds to adopt abandoned Haitian baby he found

CNN – Jimmy Amisial was walking through Gonaives, Haiti, on his way to a New Year’s Eve party to ring in 2018 when he spotted a large crowd and approached it.

When I got to the place where the people were making noise I saw a baby,” said Amisial, 22 at the time and visiting his homeland on a break from school in Texas. “It was in a pile of trash crying, and there wasn’t a single soul who wanted to do anything about it.”

While the locals were afraid to touch the infant because they feared the child was either cursed or evil, Amisial said, he nervously picked him up.

“He had no clothes on. He had fire ants crawling all over him because he’s been there for a couple of hours. When I picked him up he immediately stopped crying.”

A bond was made and now, more than four years later, Amisial is trying to make fatherhood official by formally adopting the boy he has not let go of since that night.

Tens of thousands raised for adoption
After the holiday break, Amisial returned to Texas as required by his student visa program but left the child in the care of his mother while he continued to financially support them.

A year later, in 2019, Amisial decided to start the process to formally adopt the child he had named Emilio Angel Jeremiah but he quickly ran into obstacles as the process turned out to be costly.

“It wasn’t that easy,” Amisial said. “In Haiti it’s hard to do government stuff. When I started the process it seemed fine but then they asked me for a lot of money but I didn’t have the funds.”

All God’s Children International, an adoption agency, estimates it costs over $40,000 to adopt a child from Haiti without including airfare, lodging and other fees associated with travel, according to its website.

So, in 2020 Amisial decided to take a break from school, where he studied communications, to focus on working so he could save up money to adopt Emilio and support his family in Haiti. He works as a part-time landscaper and delivery assistant.
On July 27 he set up an online fundraiser to help raise money for Emilio’s adoption fees.

Amisial set a goal of $60,000, and as of Friday morning he had raised over $79,000.

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