DANIEL ESPINOZA first saw his future wife from across the room at a dim Las Vegas casino. It was New Year’s Eve 2014, and a beautiful woman with big brown eyes and dirty-blond hair was playing slots. Espinoza, a construction worker and party boy who was about to turn 30, sat down next to her. Julia was bubbly and confident, and, Espinoza soon found out, made her living as an escort.
Their relationship quickly went from “zero to a hundred,” says Espinoza. A month after they met, she had effectively moved into his Las Vegas apartment. A couple of days later, she brought home two Chihuahuas: Skinny Mini for her and Fatty for him. Soon after, the couple traveled to the Mexican village where Espinoza grew up, and he introduced Julia, a white 33-year-old from New York, to his mother. Then, surrounded by a small group of friends and family, they got married in a civil ceremony.
Espinoza never saw himself as the settling-down type, but when Julia told him that year that she was pregnant, he literally jumped with joy. “It was the best feeling of my life,” he says. Each night, he’d listen to Julia’s belly and assure his son-to-be that his father would protect him.
But Espinoza knew his son would face his share of challenges. Julia, whose last name has been omitted to protect her privacy, had a long history of using heroin. A few weeks after their son was born, in late 2015, Julia was incarcerated for nearly two years for a parole violation, leaving Espinoza with the infant. (Child Protective Services, which got involved after the child’s birth, had deemed Espinoza a safe caregiver.) Sometimes, Espinoza hired a babysitter; sometimes, he brought his son with him to construction sites. He called his son “my little engine,” because, he says, “he kept me going forward.”
In 2018, after Julia had returned, their second child, a girl, was born. A year later, Julia found out she was pregnant again, and the family moved into a bigger home. Espinoza was buoyed by the news of each pregnancy. “A kid, for me, is another reason to live,” he says.
The couple’s relationship was difficult to categorize: They were married, they loved each other, and they co-parented, but by the third pregnancy, their dynamic had become strained. Espinoza was frustrated by Julia’s continued drug use and didn’t want her friends around, because some of them used, too. She began spending more and more time away from home, saying she needed space.
What Espinoza didn’t know was that Julia had learned about a new way to make money to support her addiction: putting their baby up for adoption. On Google, she found an agency in Utah, Brighter Adoptions, that would provide an apartment, medical care, and a weekly allowance during her pregnancy. Once she had the baby and signed the adoption papers, she would receive even more cash. Not that she really thought she would relinquish her baby, she told me recently. “I was on heroin at the time,” she said, “and so at first, it started out like kind of a hustle for me.”
Eight weeks before her due date, she hitched a ride with a friend to Layton Meadows, a sprawling apartment complex just north of Salt Lake City. It’s one of the many places where Utah’s cottage industry of adoption agencies houses expecting mothers, who are enticed by free lodging and cash stipends.
Depending on whom you ask, the state’s laws are the most “adoption-friendly”—or the most exploitative—in the country. Many states allow mothers to change their minds days or even weeks after consenting to adoption, but in Utah, no such safeguard exists: Once the papers are signed, the decision is irreversible. While married fathers must be notified of