Photograph showing Jeremy Pixton, a Chilean man who was illegally adopted 42 years ago by an US couple, in Santiago, Chile, Aug 28, 2018. EPA-EFE/Alberto Peña

Photograph showing Jeremy Pixton, a Chilean man who was illegally adopted 42 years ago by an US couple, during a press conference in Santiago, Chile, Aug 28, 2018. EPA-EFE/Alberto Peña

Photograph showing Jeremy Pixton, a Chilean man who was illegally adopted 42 years ago by an US couple, with Nos buscamos director Constanza del Rio at a press conference in Santiago, Chile, Aug 28, 2018. EPA-EFE/Alberto Peña

The Chilean organization Nos Buscamos (We Search) helped reunite a mother and his biological son, a man born in Chile and illegally adopted by a couple in the United States.

Jeremy Pixton, 42, on Tuesday met with Judge Mario Carroza, who leads the investigation of the more than 500 cases of illegal adoptions of Chilean babies during the 1970s and '80s.

Pixton will travel to the southern Chilean island of Chiloe on Wednesday to meet Blanca Gallardo, his biological mother.

Born in October 1976 at Santiago's San Borja Hospital, he was extracted from the country with the help of an attorney and through the Chilean branch of the Mormon Church to a Mormon couple in the US state of Utah.

Some time ago, the man started searching for information regarding his biological family, knowing only that he had been born in Chile.

It was through a TV show that he found out about Nos Buscamos and contacted the group's director, Constanza del Rio.

The organization tracked Gallardo down through Pixton's birth certificate, in which the midwife who participated in the birth had written the mother's full name.

Nos Buscamos then called the woman, who lives in Chiloe, and told her that her son was looking for her.

"She was astonished when I called her to tell her that her son, born in 1976, was looking for her," Del Rio said."She responded that it was not possible, as her son died during birth."

DNA tests then confirmed that Blanca Gallardo is Jeremy's biological mother.

Del Rio said that Nos Buscamos has solved as many as 32 illegal adoption cases, although their database suggests that there are more than 3,000 similar cases.

Social workers in hospitals during the 1970s and '80s were found to be largely responsible for the separations of newborns and their mothers - particularly those belonging to poor families - taking the babies under the pretense that they had died at birth.