There are 300 children in China who have been waiting to come home for over five years, and President Donald Trump is “the only one that can make this happen at this point,” mother Lauren Hawley says.
A day does not go by that Hawley and her family don’t talk about Eleanor, their 7-year-old daughter who is currently living in an orphanage in China.
“These children are not forgotten, and they have sisters and brothers and grandparents and cousins that have ached every single day that they’ve not been home,” Hawley said through tears.
Hawley, her husband, and three daughters are one of 300 adoptive American families who were matched with a child in China before China closed its international adoption program in 2024. To this day, it remains unclear if the 300 families who had been told they were cleared to move ahead with their adoptions are grandfathered in since the program’s closing was announced after the 300 adoption matches were made.
Hawley believes it will only take one phone call between world leaders for the waiting children to come home.
“I would just ask President Trump to please, please put this at the forefront of the conversations you’re having. It may not feel like a big deal because it’s 300 kids, but there’s 300 kids that have missed out on the love and the provision of these families,” the mother told The Daily Signal.
Hawley and husband Kevin Hawley began the adoption process in 2018 and chose to adopt from China because Lauren Hawley, in her own words, has “had this love for the Chinese people” since she was a girl, which led her to minor in Chinese in college and take multiple trips to China.
The Hawleys were matched with their daughter Eleanor in January of 2020 and thought she would be home by April, in time for her second birthday in May. Upon first seeing Eleanor’s picture, “we just both melted,” Lauren Hawley said, adding, “it just felt like a deep knowing that she was ours.”
Eleanor has a metabolic disorder and there is a clinic near the Hawleys’ home outside Cincinnati, Ohio, that is well equipped to provide her with medical care.
The COVID-19 pandemic initially slowed the adoption and soon months turned into years of waiting.
When Lauren Hawley heard the news last year that China was closing its international adoption program, she had a panic attack.
“I couldn’t breathe. It was like the death of a child,” Hawley said. But a week later, adoption organizations such as Lifeline Children’s Services gave Hawley hope, explaining that it was not clear if China might still allow the already matched children to come home.
The Hawley family had 30-minute video calls with Eleanor every six months ahead of China closing its international adoption program.
“She knew us. She called us ‘mama and baba,’ and she called her big sisters ‘jie jie,’ which is big sister in Chinese. And we talked about getting on a plane, and we said, ‘Mommy’s going to come and bring you home on a plane.’ We told her how much we loved her, and, you know she knew we were coming.”
The Hawleys have not been given the opportunity to explain to Eleanor why they have not come to bring her home, and they have no way of knowing if the orphanage has told the 7-year-old the situation or that the Hawley family is still working to bring her home.
“You feel like these precious children have had so much loss already, and then to go through losing another family and being told we love you, we want to bring you home, and then all of a sudden, nothing. I can’t imagine what their hearts have gone through,” the mother said.
Hawley says she is committed to continuing to fight for “every single one of these children” because they are “worth fighting years for, no matter how long it takes.”
