The Journey, Episode 1: Gifts

Hi, it's Madeline Barron. I'm so excited to bring you this new story from the brilliant investigative reporter, Ava Kaufman, and our long-time incredible producer Natalie Chablonsky. Ava is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and in my perhaps biased view, one of the most astounding investigative reporters working today. And the story, well, I'll let it speak for itself, but this one has really made me think deeply about what makes a family. Who gets to be a parent? And how little recourse there is for anyone, when things go terribly wrong. We'll be releasing new episodes every week, but if you want to listen to the entire series right now, with no waiting and no ads, you can do that by subscribing to The New Yorker. And you can take advantage of a special deal for In The Dark listeners, a seven-day free trial, not just to this series, but to all of our past seasons and to everything the magazine offers. Just tap the button at the top of the In The Dark Feed right here in Apple Podcasts to subscribe. And here's the thing about becoming a subscriber. This kind of work we do, this in-depth investigative reporting and meticulous production, can take a long time. We actually have a whole other story that's coming out soon that I've been working on for more than a year. All of this is expensive. We're traveling. We're not working on doors. We're reviewing thousands of pages of records. If you're already a subscriber to The New Yorker, thank you. And if not, please help us out by subscribing today. But last year, I started watching videos posted online by a woman in Corpus Christi, Texas. "This will be my fifth pregnancy. I have four bio kids. Very new at YouTubing, so bear with me. I'm still getting the hang of actually speaking and looking at the camera and making videos." Kayla Elliott was about to carry a child for strangers. She figured about nine months of work, and then it be over. In the delicate jargon of the fertility industry, the experience is called a journey. Like every surrogate mother, Kayla understood the baby was not hers. It was a gift for someone else. Kayla was carrying a baby for a couple who told her they desperately wanted a second child, and who tried unsuccessfully to conceive. "And I say this with all my heart, guys, like if I could give my fertility to just a sliver of it to every mom out there who's struggling with fertility, I would do it in a heartbeat. I mean, I would like no questions asked. Like I, you know, I love the fact that I can help another family and I don't see." We kept posting updates and videos, mostly on TikTok, so that her family and friends could follow along. "Here to this guy's 17 weeks today, a little baby girl, belly bump, or loving being a surrogate." But Kayla's journey would take her somewhere unexpected. Her posts would eventually attract a very different audience. "Popped up, my friends sent it to me on TikTok." I checked my email, and here my attorney had sent us a TikTok, and that's what really stopped me in my tracks. "And I was just scrolling, and then I seen the names. And I was like, my heart just stopped. Like, are you serious?" "Started to make me shake. I was getting so bad and worried." Kayla would end up becoming a whistleblower. Drawing attention to a confounding scheme that had been going on for years. "And now to a bizarre story in the San Gabriel Valley, the first thought that went into my head is, oh my god. Like, what don't we know?" "This is one of the craziest stories I've ever heard." Kayla would be swept up into a much larger scandal, one that's still unfolding, and that threatens to undermine the entire surrogacy industry. "There's clearly a loophole in relation to surrogacy." That's not a loophole. That's surrogacy has designed. The scandal would raise uncomfortable questions about who gets to be a parent. "I'm really afraid that people who have no other way to have a family, this will be taken away from them." And it would prompt investigations by child welfare and law enforcement agencies. "For all intents and purposes, she's kidnapped their child. That's what she's done." The bureau refused to comment on the case, but Arcadia police confirmed that their detectives are working with the FBI. "We believe that it extended beyond our city and into possibly other parts of the country and maybe internationally." I'm Eva Kaufman, an investigative reporter at The New Yorker. From In the Dark and The New Yorker, this is The Journey, episode one, GIFS. One day last fall, I visited Kayla Elliott and her boyfriend, Blake Burry. They live in Corpus Christi near the Gulf. It's marshy, and at low tide, you can smell the water. Ducks, chickens, goats, and a pig roam their grassy backyard. Inside it was crowded too. Four kids, plus cats, kittens, fish, even a foreign exchange student who'd recently arrived. "Hey, this is Diego from France. You got one thing to do." Kayla's surrogate thing began in 2024, not long after she turned 26. "What was the conversation between you guys about wanting to do that?" Back then, Blake supported the family with his job as a pest control technician. Kayla was mostly a stay-at-home mom, though she sometimes took on work, cleaning rich people's houses. The couple and Kayla's four kids lived with Blake's dad. With the money from surrogacy, they'd be able to rent a place of their own. "So, I joined some Facebook groups. I think it was. Surrogate's an intended parents, and there was a few other groups, and then I posted a picture of myself with a profile. "This is who I am. This is my age. This is where I live. Like, I'm just kind of curious for if anybody wants to reach out, kind of thing." Almost immediately, Kayla got a message. It was from an agency in Los Angeles, called Mark Surrogacy. Its coordinators told her they'd matched her with a set of intended parents, or IPs, as they're known in the industry. "Okay, so they started by saying, 'Hey, do you want to have a baby for this?' Basically, they were like, 'Hey, Kayla, we have a Chinese couple. It's ready to get started.' You know, we're interested in talking.' And I was like, 'Yes.' The agency shared a profile of the couple they had in mind. It showed a ponchy, 64-year-old man. His arm draped around a younger woman with short-cropped black hair. The profile said they lived in Arcadia, California, a city just outside LA. They'd been married three years, had one child, a daughter, a sweetheart, the profile said, who wanted nothing more than a brother or sister. They'd already gone through ten rounds of IVF. "It seemed like, okay, you know, they've tried and tried. They've been unsuccessful like, you know, all these years. And so, who better to come in and help a have a baby than someone that's great at having a baby, you know?" The intended parents' names were Guo Jun Shuan and Sylvia Zhang. And after reading their story, Kayla was moved. Kayla herself had been adopted at birth by a woman who'd struggled with infertility. Now, she wanted to help this couple from Arcadia. She hadn't met or considered any other intended parents through the agency, but she was flattered that they seemed so eager to get started with her. It would be an honor they had written, if you carry the baby for us. Kayla said yes. Like most surrogates, Kayla would be what's known as a gestational carrier, meaning she wouldn't have any genetic ties to the child. It wasn't her egg. The couple's embryo was made from an anonymous donor egg and sperm from the intended father, Guajun. Kayla began the month's lung process of preparing her body to receive the embryo. She posted about the steps on TikTok. Long story short, guys. We're excited. It's happening. We're already there. We're medical screenings. They know my name when I walk in now. They're like, "Good morning, Kayla." I'm like, "Hello, just here for more blood work.". and rounds of hormone injections. "When I stay, y'all can do my shots with me. First, I ice." "When I find a location. " These shots came with side effects. "As my hips are bruised and not eating red, itchy, and it's just poor." "But totally a blessing for the I.P.s, of course." After all this, Kayla grew concerned. She hadn't heard directly from the I.P.s. She sent worried messages to the agency, Mark Sorgacy. She read me a few of them. "I remember reading their profile beforehand, and they said they wanted their surgery to be a lifelong friend, so I hope for more of that connection." "It's sad not being able to talk to them to be honest." "Oh, wow. I see. I was really like, why am I not talking to them what's going on?" "And see, I remember they kept telling me constantly, I.P.s are very busy. That's what they tell me all the time. I.P.s are very busy, very busy. They're business owners, very busy. That's what they would tell me." The coordinators reassured her. She would meet the I.P.s on the day of the embryo transfer, which was scheduled for July 2024. For the procedure, Kayla flew from Corpus Christi to a fertility clinic in L.A. where the couple's embryo was stored. "As an adult, I haven't been on a plane, so this will be quite an experience." The transfer was quick, like a pap smear. The doctor threaded a catheter through Kayla's cervix, and then, using a long syringe, gently placed the embryo in her uterus. In the waiting room, Kayla learned that Sylvia wasn't coming. Apparently, she was sick with a stomach bug. Gojoon was there, though, looking just like his picture, if maybe a bit older. "It was almost like relief actually seeing the dad walk in because I was like, it is him, you know, and so I was kind of like a breath of breath really if it's him and it's real." Gojoon presented Kayla with a series of gifts, a bouquet of pink roses, a red envelope stuffed with cash, and a gilded, jade bracelet. As Gojoon fastened the bracelet onto Kayla's wrist, he explained, through a translator, that the jewelry represented an invitation to join this family. "I just thought it was the coolest day, like, oh, you know, they care about me. Like, this is really cool. Like, I felt honored, you know what I mean? That I was receiving this as a gift." In a photograph taken that day, Kayla stands beside Gojoon. He's petite, dressed like a businessman. She's wearing leggings, the new bracelet. Her neck tattoo peeks out from a yellow crop top hoodie that says "Stanamanica." She'd visited the pier that morning. The two of them are smiling, showing off a printout of the ultrasound. "He's holding a picture of them a little, yeah, I mean, it's not much to see. It looks like a little grain of rice, but that's the embryo that they implanted." That embryo stuck. Kayla was pregnant. Now that she was carrying for the couple, Kayla started receiving installments of her salary. It was good money. More than she'd ever made. Around $4,500 a month, plus pregnancy-related expenses. She'd even get an allowance for a house cleaner of her own. Like, that's how we moved here. That's how we got my car. Like, there's a lot of things great that came from that to help my family as well. Tell me a little bit more about that. What are the kinds of things you were able to start doing, you know? They've just taken the kid, like, I don't say, like, amusement parts. The stuff like that, you know what I mean? Just places that we normally wouldn't have money to save, to go and do. We were able to just, like, not even think about it and just do it. You know what I mean? What's the point? Besides having pain bills and seeing what we had left. Christmas was awesome for the kids. Oh, yeah, Christmas. We went all out. Like, this money really ultimately went to the kids. Surrogacy is difficult work. It requires not only physical fortitude, but a certain emotional rigor. To do a good job, you have to train yourself, not to get too attached. At the same time, it's inevitable to be thinking about the living being you're growing. Everything you eat, how much you sleep, how much stress you're under, all of it can affect the baby. Hello to talk. Kayla here, surrogate, almost 31 weeks. As Kayla entered her third trimester, communication with the IPs was still spotty. And now she was dealing with some medical complications. I spent ten hours in the ER yesterday and it's just been a nightmare. There were migraines that made it impossible for her to stand. And she was having trouble with her vision. I'm tired. I don't feel like myself. I can't even go outside because the light hurts my eyes. I'm just, I am miserable. Kayla was diagnosed with papal edema, which is when excess pressure in the brain causes the optic nerve to swell. I kept telling myself, you know, I have four beautiful children, I want to see them grow up and I can't lose my eyesight over this. A doctor told her the condition could make an epidural risky. So she might need to have an unmedicated labor, a prospect which terrified her. You have any tips for me for a all natural unmedicated birth? Please let me know. This is delivery number five and I'm like totally freaked. With her due date approaching, Kayla was trying to stay at beat. I have at the minimum at least seven weeks left to bake this little baby. Get her own ice and plump for her mom and dad. Bake, little baby, bake. She was scheduled for an induction on March 13th, 2025. That night, as she lay in bed at the hospital in Corpus Christi, waiting for an IV drip to start. Kayla kept making videos. All right, guys, we made it. I think Blake's nervous. Oh, I'm not nervous, I think you're nervous. No, I think you're nervous. No, I don't think you're nervous. They're about to take us to a migrant delivery. To start the process, I'm nervous. But let's get this baby out. Kayla had shared the date with the agency. Mark Sergacy beforehand. So the intended parents would be ready to travel to Texas and take their baby back to LA. But as Kayla started having contractions, Sylvia and Guadjoon hadn't yet arrived. I was getting worried, you know? Like, oh my gosh, are they coming? You're what's happening? And really, I was just confused because it's like, hello, about to have your child. The labor started in the early afternoon. Around eight that night, Kayla gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Still, no sign of Guadjoon or Sylvia. The nurses brought the baby over to Kayla for skin-to-skin contact. Her tiny hand rested on Kayla's tattoo chest. She was a long baby, with a shock of black hair, tucked beneath a pink and blue beanie. And her mouth was open, as though she just been surprised. Kayla was enthralled, though she knew these were probably their last moments together. After an hour, the nurses took the infant away. Later that night, Kayla got a text from Sylvia that she made it to the hospital. I was almost kind of like, okay, like, someone's there with her, you know? Someone that's not just a hospital worker or a nursery worker, you know what I mean? So it felt almost like safe at that point because it was like, okay, I can kind of rest now. The next morning, Sylvia came to see Kayla. It was the first time the two of them actually met. Sylvia looked frail, and when they hugged, Kayla could feel the bones through her leather jacket. Sylvia showed the same large ass that Guadjoon had at the embryo transfer, placing $2,000 in cash in Kayla's lap and doling out $100 bills to everyone else in the room. Kayla's mom, Blake, two of Kayla's kids. But when it came to the actual baby, Sylvia seemed a little bosé. Sylvia asked Blake and Kayla for a ride to the airport, so they got to see the baby one more time. As they said goodbye, Sylvia handed them $500, and then the journey was over. Back home, Kayla cried for two weeks. She'd mentally prepared herself to give up the child, but it was as if her body had yet to catch up with what her mind already knew. She posted on TikTok. Um, like I said guys, I'm not crying, you know, morning, the, uh, the baby specifically on my morning, the chapter closing because it was, um, it was an experience for sure of beautiful one and, um, it just flew by like so fast and, um, a lot of my hormones are just like postpartum, baby blues kind of thing, but, um, I didn't expect to be this emotional so it's really just kind of strange to me. It helped that Sylvia became somewhat more responsive. She shared with Kayla the baby's name and sent her some videos. She was a big old cheek. Oh my god. Kayla showed me one where the baby girl right-eyed and square-faced is wiggling around in a onesie patterned with heart. I haven't seen the pictures of her face up close. Oh, as they began to text a little more, Sylvia shared she was in a hurry to have another child and asked Kayla if she would carry for her family again. Kayla wasn't sure. She'd only been not pregnant for just a few weeks, and it'd be several months until her body would be ready. And she had another reason to hesitate. About halfway through Kayla's pregnancy, she'd heard something weird, though it seemed, at the time, easy enough to explain away. Kayla had been scrolling through Facebook when she discovered there was a woman in Pennsylvania who was also carrying a baby for Sylvia and Guajun. This was a surprise. Kayla wasn't aware that the couple had hired another surrogate. The two women started messaging, and the other surrogate told Kayla something else. Like Kayla, she'd been led to believe that the IPs had just one child. When in fact, they already had multiple children. Kayla was shocked, but the surrogate and Pennsylvania told her, "She didn't think the situation was shady. Just strange." Kayla wrote to the agency, Mark Sirgacy, to express her confusion. A coordinator there told her, "The couple just wanted a large family," and noted a little casually, quote, "they definitely don't have a million kids LOL." Kayla felt uneasy, but it wasn't as though she could just back out. She was already pregnant. The baby was coming as was the salary. She decided to follow the advice of the couple's other surrogate, who told her they both just had to suck it up and deal. But now, two months after Kayla gave birth, the mystery of the intended parents and their many children returned. This time, at a far more alarming scale. It began again on Facebook. Kayla was added to a group chat by someone who'd seen one of her posts on social media. The chat contained a few more women, who'd also been surrogates for Sylvia and Guo Jun. Even stranger, these women had discovered that Mark's surrogacy had been opened by Sylvia. The couple had set up the agency for themselves, and they seemed to be using it to recruit women across the country to have multiple children for them at the same time. The idea of the couple just wanted a big family, now seemed less plausible. If that was the case, why did they open their own agency, and why they lied to the surrogates about only having one or two kids? Some of the women in the group chat formed the suspicion that Sylvia and Guo Jun might be selling the children. Kayla was horrified. She'd put herself through a grueling experience, all to give strangers the gift of life. Now she felt manipulated, used. I was really upset. I was really mad because it was crazy, you know, and it was a lot. She decided to post again on TikTok. In the video, she shared what she'd been hearing about the couple and their dubious agency. We don't have the audio of this one. Kayla said she was soon asked to take it down by an FBI agent. But before she removed it, the video went viral. As Kayla's story made its way around the internet, it was seen by one set of people in particular, the many, many other surrogates who'd also carried for the same couple. Each believing they'd been the only one. Popped up, my friend sent it to me on TikTok. And so I checked my email, and here my attorney had sent us a TikTok. And I'm like, oh, well, what is my attorney sending me TikTok videos? She's like, look at this. She's all, can you imagine? I go, I go, what do you mean, can I imagine? That's the lady we had the baby before. I was like, yeah, that's the name of my contract. That's the father in my contract. So I already, at that point, I'm like, oh, my God. Okay, we're like, and that's what really stopped me in my tracks. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into? But spring and summer, the surrogates for Sylvia and Guadrune began to find one another. Under different circumstances, they might've had a little in common. They lived in Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida, California. They were white, Hispanic, black, Asian, lesbians, aspiring tradwives, military spouses, single moms, some opposed abortion, one had worked in an abortion clinic, but thrust into the same unnerving situation. They quickly bonded as they tried to figure out what was going on. Some of the surrogates created group chats on Facebook. They started swapping photographs of the same Jade bracelets, same envelopes filled with cash, and same intended mother, smiling at their bed sides hours after they'd given birth. For the surrogates, even sharing these details could be risky. Most surrogacy contracts require confidentiality. If the marked surrogates revealed personal information about the intended parents, they could be forced to repay the money they'd earned, or even be sued. But the risk seemed worth taking. The surrogates worried about the children they'd carried, and why the couple had wanted so many of them. They wondered whether they'd been unwitting participants in some kind of dystopian mass breeding scheme, or if they'd carried babies for human traffickers. They started sending tips to the FBI, an FBI agent responded, and asked the women questions about their journeys, though the agent wouldn't tell them much in return. Kayla was desperate to find out if the newborn she'd carried was okay. For days, she texted and called Sylvia. She was hoping Sylvia might be able to reassure her. Finally, Sylvia called her back. And immediately, Sylvia told Kayla something that made Kayla even more alarmed. She and Guogin had just spent four days in jail. When Kayla heard this, she started recording the call. Sylvia didn't explain exactly why she'd been arrested. Oh my gosh. But she alluded to a police investigation, regarding child trafficking. Sylvia said, "I'm not selling the baby. The babies were all living with her and Guogin." Yeah. We spent a lot of money. Sylvia told Kayla, "We want to be the family here." No, I believe you. I understand what you're saying. I was trying to figure out why all these other girls were saying these horrible things. The conversation was bizarre. Sylvia spent the first few minutes lamenting that the police had taken away her phone. Kayla remained sympathetic and kept trying to steer the conversation back to the baby she'd carried. Was she safe? No, I understand. I believe you. I just, like I said, I was really concerned. And then, of course, I understand that she isn't my baby, but still giving birth to her and meeting you and caring about you. It wasn't entirely clear whether Sylvia even knew which of her surrogates she was talking to. At one point, she mentioned what sounded like a different baby, carried by someone else. Okay, wait, I think you're confused as to who you're talking to, because I think this is Kayla. Yeah, Kayla was helping me to have a baby, right? Yes, yeah, I had the baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. After a lot of unsatisfying back and forth, Kayla got one clue about the baby. She wasn't with Sylvia. She was with DCFS, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. So Kayla dialed the DCFS hotline, hoping someone official could finally tell her what was going on. I called and spoke to a lady, I guess, at the main line, whoever you call. And she basically, I kind of had a haggle with her for a minute because she didn't want to tell me anything. And I said, look, I'm a surrogate. I am the child birth mom. I gave birth to this baby. And she was like, OK, she said, well, she said, I can't give you know, any, you know, too much information. Child welfare cases in California are confidential. Since Kayla wasn't actually related to the baby, she didn't have the legal right to know anything about her. But by emphasizing her unusual connection to the child, she managed to get herself transferred to two case workers. And I'm just like pacing back and forth through the house, like absolutely just shocked at what I was hearing. This is when Kayla learned the true number of children that the couple had in the man I never got his name. But he said that, yeah, there was like 21 children, 21 children, most under the age of three. And he was saying that it was just the wildest thing ever that like all these children looked like related, but not related like hair colors were semi different in eye colors and some looked more mixed than others. And it was just a really crazy like they said they'd never seen anything like that. It turned out that Sylvia and Guadrune had been jailed on suspicion of child endangerment. The couple had been released without charges, but the police investigation was ongoing. Meanwhile, the children had been taken into temporary foster care, a juvenile dependency court in LA would be looking into the situation to decide whether or not Sylvia and Guadrune could get them back. This wasn't overwhelming set of facts for Kayla and the other surrogates to take in. And there wasn't much they could do. Surrogacy in the United States is largely unregulated, a multi-billion dollar industry underwritten by good intentions. It's harder to open a hair salon than it is to open a surrogacy agency. And if something goes wrong at an agency, there's no licensing department to appeal to, no regulatory body to report to, no federal laws govern the intimidac of bringing strangers together to create a new life. There is, however, that one universal rule for surrogates don't get attached. The marked surrogates had known this from the start of their journeys. You tell yourself this isn't your trauma, and those are things that you should know before even applying to be a surrogate. This is not your baby, like you don't get attached. But now they began to question whether that rule still applied. The intended parents had been in jail and were under investigation by police and the FBI. And their children had been placed in foster care. Kayla said if she'd known that this was going to happen to the baby she'd given birth to, she would have never handed her over to Sylvia. She liked to say that she would have fled with her over the border to Mexico. For Kayla, this was just a soothing fantasy. The baby she'd carried was already in the foster system. But that wasn't true for everyone. Because at that very moment, several women were still caring for Sylvia and Guajun. In fact, in May 2025, at the time of the parents' arrest, six more babies were still on the way. Record your message at the tone when you are finished, hang up, or press pound for more options. Yes, detective. Hi, my name is Stacy King. I am currently pregnant in state of Virginia with a couple's baby. And I'm just trying to see what I can come up with paperwork-wise to protect the baby that will be coming in the next little while. If you could please give me a call back, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Stacy King lives in Chesapeake, Virginia, and works at a shop that installs audio accessories. Yeah, we do boats, we do cars, we do houses, they even do the little golf carts. I met up with her in the shop one afternoon with our producer Natalie Jablonski and Stacy led us to her office in the back. Stacy is the shop's bookkeeper. She's exceptionally organized. And like Kayla, she was so excited about her surrogacy journey that she documented nearly every step along the way. She and her husband got matching t-shirts. His red, it's not mine. Hers, it's not mine either. She was nearly four months away from giving birth to a baby girl for Sylvia and Guajun when she first heard about the other women. She'd come across a warning posted on Facebook by a surrogate who'd seen Kayla's TikTok. I freaked out. I was at home. My husband was in the shower. I was trying to read through it and I can feel like my heart rate speeding up and time slowing down. He was as if she'd taken a fast-acting drug. So she contacted the lawyer who'd reviewed her surrogacy contract. It read scared spitless. What do I do? The lawyer didn't seem too concerned. Basically, he said, as long as she was still getting paid and as long as the pregnancy was going smoothly, she should keep calm and carry on. She eventually talked to other lawyers who told her the same thing. She should follow the terms of her contract which meant staying in touch with the intended parents and handing over the baby as soon as she was born. What are the thoughts going through your head in terms of what's going to happen to the baby girl? This is a lot. It was a whole lot. I just wanted her to be safe. I wanted her to be safe. My next thought was just trying to make sure she came out healthy. Stacey panicked and then she felt guilty for panicking. She didn't want to cause any stress to the baby. There were days where I couldn't come to work. I had to call on and say, look, this is what I've hit. I can't come in today. She had so many questions. Would Sylvia and Gorgian still be allowed to come to Virginia to pick up the baby if they were under investigation? And even if Stacey could hand the baby over to them, would it be the right thing to do? Stacey joined one of the group chats, made up of surrogates who'd carried for the couple. One of them had delivered a baby girl the same weekend that Sylvia and Gorgian had spent in jail. That surrogate was still recovering from a C-section when her county's child welfare agency took the newborn away. Stacey wanted to find out whether there was anything she could do to intervene. Before it was too late. She started calling around to all the authorities she could think of. Yes, that's a good pie. My name is Stacey King. Yes, hi. I'm almost 38 weeks pregnant and I'm just trying to see what I can do. I just need some advice and to support me to you guys. Nice to continue. Good morning Stacey. I know they can specialise with FBI LA. I'm a few. Give me a call. Hi, Miss King. This is an FBI boss. I do this county DCFS social media. Could you please give me a call back as soon as possible. Thank you. Just going through these and just thinking about the number of agencies too you're dealing with. It's so many different entities from a law firm from the LA social services, Virginia social services, FBI, local police. I mean, I haven't tried calling and talking to people in the foster care system. Trying to figure out how to become a foster parent to her. DC wasn't even sure. if that would be legal. In states like California, the courts are explicit that gestational surrogates don't have any claim to the children they're carrying. If a surrogate could change your mind at any point in the process, then the contract sheet signed would be meaningless. It's not difficult to see how introducing ambiguity into these kinds of transactions could lead the surrogacy industry to collapse. None of the couple surrogates had gone into this line of work because they'd wanted another kid of their own. If anything, the opposite was true. Kayla had had her tubes tied. Stacey had that. It's not mine, T-shirt. But now, many of the surrogates were raising questions about their contracts. They were wondering about their custody rights. And in doing so, they were unintentionally putting the industry to an unprecedented test. We ended up calling children in youth and explaining it to them really early on back in June or July. Alexa Fossold was a long-distance bus driver and central Pennsylvania. She was due around the same time as Stacey. In October 2025. And she had a lot of the same questions. And everybody kept telling us the answer of "There's no baby yet, so we can't help you." And so I was like, "Oh, okay. So what does that mean? You're going to wait till the day I give birth to step in and help us. What does that mean for us? Am I going to have to take the baby home?" And then called children in youth afterwards. Making things even trickier was the fact that it's difficult to report concerns to a child welfare agency about a child that doesn't yet exist. Alexa told me she kept being asked for the child's date of birth, which was obviously impossible to provide. They didn't know what to tell us because there was no baby yet. They're like, "Well, are you reporting yourself?" It was really confusing to them. Stacey, Alexa, and the other pregnant surrogates made dozens of calls like this, trying to figure out what to do. Mostly what they learned was that, at least for now, they were completely on their own. All they had was one another. They woke up messaging the group chat and went to sleep the same way. They traded notes on their doctor's appointments, then each other ultrasound photos. They still weren't sure what would happen when they gave birth, if they'd even be allowed to bring the baby's home. But tentatively, the women started to get ready. They texted about baby fever and how their inner mama bears were coming out in, quote, "full effing force." Joked about buying land for a commune where they could collectively babysit. They traded advice on breast pumps, knit baby blankets, collected baby clothes. Even as they made these backup lands in secret, they stayed in touch with the intended parents, as required by their contracts. They shared screenshots of their ongoing communications with Sylvia. It was now a little funny when Sylvia mixed up their names or mailed them identical tins of mooncakes or sent them the same text at the same time. "You're doing an amazing job." One of the messages said, "I am reaching out in the hope that I might have the opportunity to visit you," said another. As part of this charm offensive, Sylvia also called some of the pregnant surrogates. Stacey was two months away from delivering and decided to record their conversation. "So I don't need a cell baby into a capable of life." Sylvia sounded calm, even as she defended herself. Against some of the rumors, Stacey might have heard. "They just want to. I'm not sure why they say I'm a human trafficking. I taught them all my story to my churning, several churning, they say, "There's nothing to look like. You have a criminal case in here." So they are going to contact with a detective to find out what's going on. It's been a lot. Sylvia offered to fly the Stacey's house to explain herself in person. "Even I think I should fly to your place to tell you the stories. I'm not that person. We are working super hard to keep our life. We just want us to have a family." "I'm not a bad person," she said. "We just want to have a family." "I know you guys work. So I've tried not to bother you too much. But honestly, it's scary for us or for me too, because when they said you guys had more than one child, that kind of caught me off guard, because I only thought you had one child." Sylvia said she never tried to cheat anyone. And it sounds like Stacey is longing to believe her. "We're praying. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding. We've got to let the law and the courts do what they're supposed to." You can hear Stacey trying to imagine what a mother separated from her children must be going through. And she was working to even think about losing your kids let alone someone coming in and taking them. So my heart got into you. I know you're not doing well. Sylvia told her the arrest in May was a big mix-up. She insisted she was a good mother. She done a good job raising her children. "Some day maybe I can't invite you to my house and come back and take it for you. You can see my child. They are really healthy. They are friendly. They help each other. They are independent." They're helping each other. They're independent, she said. "They know how to put a trash to the trash can. They know how to take the shoes out and close out. Some of the children know how to put them close to the washers. Then they're eating well. So they're being raw. I follow them about Christmas appointments. I think I'm doing pretty good for the child. We can sometimes bring them to go out to play." The household Sylvia was describing sounded a bit austere. Little kids who knew had to throw away trash, but their clothes and the washing machine, and who sometimes were taken outside to play. Still, Stacey hoped for a connection, and she and Sylvia went on for a few minutes, trading notes about being mothers, about homeschooling, and juggling work. Throughout the conversation, Sylvia seemed like she was confiding in Stacey. "I've never talked with anyone. You are the only person I talked with." "I don't want to tell anybody the story is." "I might share it with my husband if that's okay." "That's okay," Sylvia said. "Just don't talk to reporters." "I don't want somebody to report anything." "I don't want anybody to report anything." But in early August, not long after that phone call, there was more reporting. "New and five disturbing details and police records as Arcadia. " Local news outlets obtained a copy of the police affidavit from the parent's arrest. Suddenly, Stacey and the surrogates had a clear picture of why Sylvia and Guo Jun had ended up in jail. And while their kids had been taken away. "We do have to warn you the details and images in these documents are graphic." According to the police, this had all started one morning three months earlier, when officers showed up at Sylvia and Guo Jun's house. They had just gotten a call from a nearby hospital. One of the couple's babies, who was two months old, had been admitted to the intensive care unit with severe head injuries, and doctors were concerned that he might have been abused. So detectives went to check out the baby's home address, a 10,000 square foot mansion in the city of Arcadia. Inside, the police wondered if they'd entered some sort of unlicensed daycare. There were rooms filled with cribs, and at least a dozen toddlers and infants seated at desks and high chairs, inside makeshift classrooms. It was impossible to tell the girls and boys apart, since all the children had their head shaved. Police also noticed CCTV cameras everywhere, recording audio and video. On one tape, a nanny named Jun Mei Li appeared to hit the two-month-old child who'd ended up in the hospital. Arcadia police say security cameras inside this home show Li placing him down out of camera sight while he can be heard crying. The baby cries for a few seconds until a thud or a hit is heard, and crying suddenly stops. This wasn't the only child who'd allegedly been abused. The footage also showed nannies forcing other children into squats, hitting them in the face, and spanking them on a table at the front of the classroom. There were so many hours of video, police were still going through it. you in. The police say while Sylvia Zing and Guandong Chen were arrested and released, their investigation into them and what went on inside this home continues. When we reached out to Sylvia and Guo Jun for comment on the series, one of their legal representatives told us he'd instructed the couple not to respond, but the couple is previously denied abusing any of their children or trafficking them. And one of their lawyers has told me the couple had done everything they could to protect their family. After seeing the images from inside the house, Stacy made a decision. So yeah, there is a switch. And it was around the, I want to say the August time frame. The switch did definitely flip. Like, you know what, let's start preparing to possibly bring her home. It was a decision that months ago would have seemed unthinkable, even irrational. It would mean taking a huge legal risk and it would mean getting attached. No, we're not biologically related, but okay, even at that point, everything I eat, my blood, everything else of me goes into her to help her be better. So she is a part of me at that point. And then Mama Bear comes out and no, she's not mine. But you want to protect a child, an innocent being that you are carrying. Stacy's two children embraced the idea of adding a new sibling to their home. They would listen to me put the monitor on my stomach and they could hear her heartbeat and they would get so excited that they could hear her heartbeat and they would talk to her. Her son raised cars on her stomach. Her daughter sang to the baby. So like, there was a point there where we were calling her "Sissy" because we were, you know, considering further on into the pregnancy of keeping her. Stacy was due in less than two months. Like every bone in our bodies was to protect this child and if we could keep her, we would. Coming up on the journey, everybody always goes back to the same thing. "Mihah, how is it that the agency didn't know everybody always asked me that?" Me and my coworker, we named her this or I get him. She wanted to have a lot of surrogates at one time. We're here because we love families. We want families to grow. And then he pulled out a gun and I mean there was kind of a standoff, the sheriff's game. "It's patently false that my client incited any sort of abuse of the child, he doesn't believe in abusing children, he actually believes in enriching them and giving them the best opportunities to succeed." I was curious what you make of that decision, just given the fact pattern so far. If you're a New Yorker subscriber, you can listen to the rest of the journey right now. Add free and Apple podcasts. To become a subscriber, tap the button at the top of the in the dark feed. For non-subscribers, new episodes will be released every Tuesday. Senior producer, Natalie Jablonsky, and producer, Raymond Tungukar. Samara Freemark is the Managing Producer for the series. It's edited by Allison McAdden, additional editing by Willing Davidson and Madeline Baron, theme and original music by Alex Weston, additional music by Chris Jullin and Allison Leaton Brown. This episode was mixed by Corey Shrepple. Our art is by Vartica Sharma. Our director by Aviva Michelev and Ben Kofi, fact-jacking by Inwo Shoo and Amon Usan. Our summer research assistant is Ethan Khan. Legal review by Fabio Bertone and Ben Murray. Our Managing Editor is Julia Rothschild, with additional support from Kiarra Ortiz. Thanks also to Parker Yesko. The editor of the New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, please send them to the team at [email protected]. I make sure to follow in the dark wherever you get your podcasts. [Music]