Americans held as children taken for 'illegal adoption'

The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission, meant to save abandoned children from the chaos following Haiti's earthquake. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a rented hotel at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, where they planned to establish an orphanage.

Whether they realised it or not, the Americans – the first known to be taken into custody since the January 12 earthquake – put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

"In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing," group leader Laura Silsby told reporters at the judicial police headquarters, where the Americans were being held pending a hearing today before a judge.

Ms Silsby said they only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from well-known Haitian pastor named as Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Ms Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she didn't consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking.

"By no means are we any part of that. That's exactly what we are trying to combat," she claimed.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told reporters the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme.

Mr Cristallin said the 33 children were taken to an SOS Children's Village outside of Port-au-Prince. SOS Children's Villages is a global nonprofit based in Austria.

Many children in Haitian orphanages aren't orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them.

Lawyers says that with so many people unaccounted for, adoptions should not go forward until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them.

Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

Relief officials face a sanitation crisis that could spread malaria, cholera and other deadly diseases throughout chaotic camps packed with hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors.

Haiti clinical director for Partners in Health Dr Louise Ivers, said she fears "a mass outbreak of measles".