As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children flee to safety, a lone American baby and his family are in the second week of being trapped at the border for want of a birth certificate.
“Bureaucrats,” the 9-month-old boy’s grandfather, Dr. William Hubbard, told The Daily Beast from the border. “The bureaucrats are a bigger problem in this war for us than the bombs and the bullets.”
The grandfather traveled from Massachusetts at the start of the war to rescue his daughter, Aislinn, and her son, Seraphim. American officials have now advised the family to risk their lives by traveling 165 miles through a war zone to a Ukrainian clerical office that might not even be functioning. They could then expect to wait months in a city gone nightmarish for a document that might not materialize.
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“Once you obtain this document and still encounter problems with crossing the border please contact us again,” the U.S. State Department further advised the Hubbards.
Ukrainian bureaucrats have offered simpler insanity. They advised William and Aislinn that they are free to cross the border. But little Seraphim would have to stay behind, even though Ukrainian babies are allowed to be carried across without papers.
“That is not happening,” William told them.
Seraphim would have been routinely issued the document if he had been born in a hospital, but his June 22 delivery was at home because his mother feared he might catch COVID-19.
Had 19-year-old Aislinn been Ukrainian, the lack of documentation would likely not have been a problem when she arrived with her son at the Slovakian border on March 15. But the Hubbards are American, and that raised suspicions among Ukrainian border officials who could not be convinced even by photos of Seraphim’s home birth and two DNA tests confirming that Aislinn was the mother.
“Because we were two Americans and had a baby, they automatically assumed that it’s baby smuggling,” William said.
The Ukrainians placed William in a detention center at a nearby military facility. Aislinn and Seraphim were consigned to a maternity hospital, where he was briefly separated from her.
“She had a complete meltdown,” William said.
After a short time, mother and baby were reunited, and they joined William at the detention center the next day. He had contacted the U.S. State Department, along with various media outlets and elected representatives back home.
William Hubbard with his daughter Aislinn, and her son, Seraphim.
Courtesy of the Hubbard FamilyAs was reported by WCVB and The Lowell Sun and others last week, Aislinn went to Ukraine when she was 16 to study ballet at the highly regarded Kyiv Choreographic College. She was sidelined by a hip injury and began teaching English.
When the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning in December for all Americans to leave Ukraine, William telephoned the American Embassy in Kyiv from his home in Fitchburg.
“I said, ‘Hey, here’s the situation, we got this little boy who doesn’t have a birth certificate. It could be two to six months before we get one. What are you guys going to do in the case that war breaks out?’” William recalled. “And they said, ‘I don’t know.’”
Aislinn consulted a lawyer in Ukraine.
“The lawyer told us what we needed to do,” William remembered. “So we began that process. Unfortunately, the lawyer in January had a fatal heart attack and died.”
In early February, William flew to Ukraine for what he planned to be a four-day trip. They had retained another lawyer, who told them the process could take several months. He said they should arrange for a DNA test and get back to him.
Aislinn had already gotten one but got another at a top-rated laboratory. Everything seemed set and William prepared to head back to his medical practice only to test positive for COVID. He had to stay in quarantine for two weeks.
On Feb. 23, William finally arrived home in Fitchburg, where he lives with his wife, Deborah, who is also a doctor. The war began at 5 a.m. the next day. He later said that he did what any dad would do. He set out to get his daughter and grandson.
On arriving back in Ukraine, he found himself in a nation transformed. The train station in picturesque Lviv was now “like a zombie apocalypse.”
“That was a freaking nightmare,” he recalled. “People had wounds and were bandaged.”
He continued through the chaos until he reached his daughter and her boyfriend. He fell exhausted into bed.
“I hadn’t slept in two and a half days, so I was like dead asleep and I woke up and the whole building was shaking,” he remembered. “I could hear artillery in the background, and the windows were shaking. I said to my daughter, ‘We gotta get packed up and get the hell outta here. This isn’t safe.’”
The crossing from Poland he just made had been total bedlam, so he decided they would do better heading for the Slovakian border. He says that a U.S. Embassy official advised him that he would likely have no trouble crossing with Seraphim even though the baby still did not have a birth certificate.
“[The official] said the Ukrainians and Europeans were being very lax with documentation and they were not requiring documents for babies as adults had had documents,” William recalled. “Which is true if you are Ukrainian.”
The embassy official sent William a letter to present to the Ukrainians asking them to assist the Hubbards because they, including Seraphim, were U.S. citizens.
On March 15, the Hubbards arrived in Uzhhorod and attempted to cross into Slovakia. They discovered that the laxness regarding documents did not apply to Americans.
“If we were two Ukrainians going across with a baby, they would’ve had no issues. ‘See, you later have a nice life,’” William said. “They’re letting their people out of the country without birth certificates, but they won’t let Americans.”
William says that the Ukrainian officials offered them a deal.
“They said to us, ‘Hey, if you wanna leave the baby just go, just do it,” William remembered. “And we’re like, ‘Are you freaking outta your mind?’”
William noted that only a child smuggler would have agreed to such a bargain. All they could do was keep asking to be released.
“They kept telling us, ‘Oh you’ll be able to go tomorrow. We’re just waiting for the OK.’ Well, it never came.”
William thinks the man in charge simply became weary of dealing with them.
“He just basically opened the gate and said, ‘Get out of here,’” William recalled.
Aislinn and Seraphim had contracted dysentery in the detention center, and William treated them as best he could as they moved into a hotel he found online. He contacted their new lawyer in Ukraine, who told him the vital statistics office that could issue the needed document was “nonfunctional.”
“He said, look, there's nothing we’re gonna be able to do for you. This could be two to six months before anybody even pays attention to this,” William recalled.
William appealed to a range of elected officials in America, all of whom would decline to discuss the case in any detail with The Daily Beast, citing privacy concerns. The American Citizen Services Office at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw responded to William with an email.
“You may need to apply for your grandson’s birth certificate,” the letter advised. “It is our understanding that you may obtain this document at the vital statistics office in Lviv.”
William responded with a phrase that seemed increasingly apt.
“I wrote ’em back and I said, ‘You guys are outta your freaking mind,’” Willam recalled.
William certainly understands that the Ukrainian are overwhelmed, with millions of other children in crisis. He cannot help but think that some high-ranking American official should be able to intervene.
“We have enough provisional documentation that they could provide a provisional document to get us across the border. Or they could just simply have somebody high enough in our government call the Ukrainians and say, ‘What the hell are you guys doing?’”
On Friday, the Hubbards were still at the hotel. They had established a GoFundMe page to help with the expenses. The wait continued.
“Nothing yet, but you never know,” William said.
One bit of good news was that little Seraphim was feeling better.
“He’s back to jovial baby self,” William told The Daily Beast.
Over the phone, Seraphim could be heard making a tiny sound of delight as he remained unknowingly trapped in a realm where more than 1 million other kids have crossed the border fleeing bombs and bullets.
