Kaylee and James Wilson thought they were on the final stretch to bring their newly adopted baby home to Missouri. Instead, they say President Donald Trump’s travel restrictions have cut them off, leaving the entire family stuck thousands of miles away in Nigeria. Now they’re pleading with Trump for a change of heart, both for their family and the many others they say may be facing the same impossible situation.
Mom-of-five Kaylee Wilson knew from an early age that she wanted to adopt. “I always had a heart for adoption as a little girl,” Kaylee told Newsweek. Her husband, James, took a little more convincing. They met through a mutual friend in 2012. James was working at an Olive Garden with Kaylee’s roommate. They immediately clicked.
“It was love at first conversation” Kaylee said. “We dated for 13 months before we were married in May 2013. We have had a very strong bond from day one. We are two people who fell in love and became best friends. We have fun together and that’s one of the reasons we’re able to get through difficult seasons of life.”
Kaylee didn’t waste any time in broaching the subject of adoption either. James told Newsweek: “Within two weeks of dating, she had said, ‘I know that one day God wants me to adopt, and I know that he wants me to marry you, so he’s gonna change your heart.” He was certainly “open” to the idea. “It was just something I had never considered,” James said.
However, the couple would be happily married for three years before a church event changed everything. “They were talking about this school in Kenya,” Kaylee said. “There were all these pictures and videos of the kids, and that really broke James’s heart.”
That moment “shattered” any lingering doubts James may have had. “As someone who self professed as being a Christian, I felt like God said to me, ‘I adopted you, why are you being so slow on this?’” James said. “The need is great, and it’s only becoming greater every year.”
According to the Pew Research Center, an analysis of the most recently available U.S. State Department data found that since 2004, the annual number of international adoptions to the U.S. fell by 94 percent as of 2023.
The Wilsons were determined to buck that trend. In 2016, they adopted their first daughter, Emmanuella, from Ghana. “We lived there with her for 19 months due to immigration laws,” Kaylee said. “It was just a very, very slow process. It hadn’t been done before. It was a new program.”
Their biological daughter, Harriette, was born in 2021, before the family traveled to Nigeria in 2021 to adopt another child, Eden, who is deaf and language deprived. Language deprivation occurs when a child, often deaf or with hearing difficulties, is not exposed to a natural language during the critical first five years of their life. This can result in sometimes permanent cognitive and social impairments.
“That was our first time visiting Nigeria,” Kaylee said. “We lived there for six months.” Towards the end of the pandemic, the family returned to their home in Missouri, where their biological son, Valor, was born in 2023. They would return to Nigeria though. In 2024, the Wilsons saw a picture of a baby called Oluwatoyin. “We just knew that this was the next child that was being highlighted to join our family,” Kaylee said.
After going through the paperwork process, the Wilsons returned to Nigeria in March 2025 to formally complete the adoption of Oluwatoyin. That was when their problems began. They had been waiting patiently for their immigration paperwork to be processed when on December 16, 2025, Trump announced restrictions and limits on the entry of foreign nationals into the U.S.
Nigeria was one of 15 countries on the restricted list. Crucially, for the Wilsons, adoption‑related immigrant visas from Nigeria were also prohibited. This was an unprecedented development. “Adoption visas were included in the ban for the first time In the history of the U.S.” Kaylee said. “In past suspensions and past bans and things of that sort, there was always an exemption for adopted children,” James added.
When the Wilsons first heard Trump was implementing a travel ban that would impact Nigeria, they assumed it would not affect their adoption of Oluwatoyin. “They’ve never banned adopting children,” Kaylee said. “It just, it doesn’t make sense, like, why would they even do that?”
It was only after the ban came into effect on January 1, 2026 that the Wilsons realized they too would be impacted. Despite being legally adopted by the Wilsons, Oluwatoyin is unable to return to Missouri under the new rules. As a result, James and Kaylee see no alternative other than to remain in Nigeria with the rest of their children until the situation changes.
“We’re going by what would make sense for us to do with any of our children. We wouldn’t put any of our children into an orphanage, and that’s the reality that we’re looking at,” James said. “I’m not trying to project my intentions onto any other family or the decisions that they’ve had to make for their children. I can only speak for my family and we are not leaving anyone behind. We’re family and families stick together.”
Based in the city of Lagos, remote working means James and Kaylee have been able to continue the jobs they had back in the U.S. The couple run a website, Waiting for Eden. “We enjoy designing products related to adoption, faith, homeschooling, and physical and spiritual health,” Kaylee said. They also started a coffee company, Level Grounds Xpresso, in 2017, to further supplement the income they need to remain in Nigeria. “It is a blessing to work from home while supporting ourselves so we can live overseas,” Kaylee said.
Their days are split between working those jobs and homeschooling their kids, while any free time is spent trying to be present as a family. “We are just focused on using this time as a family to bond. It’s just a special time because we don’t have the distractions of American life. It’s a much slower pace of life here, which we do appreciate,” Kaylee said. “It’s focused on our family time, just letting our children experience the Nigerian culture and interacting with people in the community. We’ve become very integrated into life here. We are trying to make the most of our time.”
James added: “While we do want to go back home, and while we recognize that that is our ultimate destination, we also live in a current, present moment where home is where we are together. We are trying to help cultivate memories within our children that are going to last.”
The Wilsons have a home waiting for them back in Springfield, Missouri, populated by dogs, sheep and chickens. Luckily for the Wilsons, it’s currently being tended to by their supportive parents and family relatives eagerly awaiting their return.
“Our parents and families miss us, but they are supportive and encouraging from a distance,” Kaylee said. “They know we are fulfilling our calling and purpose by bringing another child into our family. We video chat and talk on the phone often. They are very excited to meet their newest grandbaby Oluwatoyin when we get home.”
James and Kaylee have been providing regular updates on life in Nigeria with videos posted to YouTube under the handle @KayleeWilson. The channel has over 167,000 subscribers while Kaylee’s Instagram @kreativekay_wilson has 94,500 followers. As well as updates, the family have also issued direct pleas to Trump to change the immigration rules preventing them from going home.
Social media has proven a powerful tool to the Wilsons, not only in allowing them to share their story, but also connecting with other families going through similar situations. “There’s over 300 families who are also American, and most of them are not even with their children,” Kaylee said. “Their children are still in orphanages.”
The Wilsons don’t know much about the reasoning behind the Trump administration’s decision to include adoption-related visas in the travel ban. Trump’s presidential proclamation on the plans claims “radical Islamic terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and the Islamic State operate freely in certain parts of Nigeria, which creates substantial screening and vetting difficulties.”
More specifically to adoption-related visas, the proclamation states: “Familial ties can serve—and, in the past, have in fact served, based on concrete information provided by United States law enforcement and the Department of State—as unique vectors for fraudulent, criminal, or even terrorist activity through means such as the domestic or international financing of such activity.”
The Wilsons have contacted state representatives back home but any change to the rules must come from the White House itself. “This is a presidential proclamation that was made by the president, and ultimately it’s going to be up to the president to either amend it or annul it,” James said. All they can do is share their story online and the stories of other U.S. families impacted by the adoption ban and hope Trump sees it and makes an exemption.
“Perhaps the White House didn’t even realize the effect that this would have,” Kaylee said. “I would like to think that maybe it was an oversight, because this has never happened before. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Until then, Kaylee says the family is just “waiting and praying” for something to change. Kaylee still has hope that will happen. “Every child is worthy and deserves to be loved by a family,” she said. “We will keep fighting, and we will keep sharing our story, and ultimately, it’s in God’s hands.”
