Haiti detains 10 U.S. Baptists for taking 33 kids across border

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

Abandoned kids are also known as "orphans". Hello?

Unless these kids were lined up to be sacrifices in voodoo rituals, its difficult to imagine that where they were going could be any worse than where they left. I wonder how many hundreds of kids are going to die in the effort to make sure that a handful are not trafficked? There is no way the group could document these kids properly any time soon. So where will they end up now? Anyone really think reunions are likely for them?

Child trafficking vultures.

Child trafficking vultures.

Yeah. I hope they get the death penalty, or at least, tortued a little.

"We were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s leader, Laura Silsby said

The right thing to do would be to go through proper channels. It's bad enough that we have foreigners coming into the US illegally. We don't need our citizens bringing in foreigners illegally as well!

Personally, I'm surprised the Haitian police managed to catch them with all the problems their having there. Still, Laura Silsby and Co., were out of line.

Actually, until it proved that the parents and relatives are dead, they are NOT orphans. They obviously need food, shelter and medical care but until local authorities and UNICEF, etc establish that the parents and any other close blood relatives are not of this world, no one should be swooping in and taking them out of their country, good intentions or not.

no one should be swooping in and taking them out of their country, good intentions or not.

very true.

@dontknockit Abandoned kids are also known as "orphans". Hello?

OK. So, if there is an earthquake, any American missionary can come and pick up your own kids, nephews and cousin and bring them to a petshop (that they call an orphanage) in a tourist resort.

the Dominican resort of Cabarete

You'd want your daughter going there ?

its difficult to imagine that where they were going could be any worse than where they left.

You have no imagination and you're very ignorant. Read at least the article.

People go down and they’re going to fall in love with these kids

You need a picture ? Dominican Republic, where they were taken to, is one of the hugest brothel on the planet. Rates of AIDS are constantly breaking new records. And if that's already a hell for adult citizens, guess what that can be like for kids and teens that are illegal aliens.

Even if the kids have apparently no family, they have a country. Haiti never meant to abandon its kids. In a few weeks, there will be Haitian kids without families, but there will also be other Haitians that will have rebuilt a housing place and that will be able to adopt children and raise them in their own country.

If those folks were not in kid traffic, they would built their orphanage on Haitian soil. They had no need to cross the border. They only did it to get away from the control of Haitian authorities.

LIBERTAS kudos to you for finding out this interesting fact. Haiti is now just a target of these international thieves. All these countries should go home now and let Haiti deal with Haiti's problems. No foreigner should be there to "help". They only create more problems.

They can bring 10,000 children to the US if done correctly, no child trafficers making $1000s for their own pockets.

The process needs to be streamlined but to allow some money grabbing missionaries or profiteers is wrong. They can be arrested and jailed for a very long time as far as I'm concerned. < :-)

Dominican Republic, where they were taken to, is one of the hugest brothel on the planet. Rates of AIDS are constantly breaking new records.

AIDS were brought there by the wealthy population who goes there to exploit the people. With most people poor and no access to medical facilities then disease spread rapidly. That is the reason Rush Limbaugh went there and got caught with illegal drugs. A lot of the folks you call conservative Good Ole Boys, like the Fox Executives who went with Rush, go there for cheap underage prostitution. Dark skin foreigners are good enough to come to their country but are perfect for them spend a week exploiting them. Those kids at this point are better off where the relief is than to be taken and possibly kidnapped again for slavery. I say arrested them and make them serve some jail time. I don't want to see these poor children turned into prostitutes in the Dominican Republic or become slaves to Rich Conservative Families in the US.

Yes, organ harvesting is another concern for these children. Israel is a hotbed for the organ trade. A Rabi and a couple of partners were arrested last year for harvesting organs in the US and sending them to Israel. I would recommend they keep a close watch on the IDF team. It would be really convenient to let these kids or adults pass away then harvest what they can then sell them back home.

LIBERTAS,

Interestingly, you have put together a bunch of unrelated (both to each other and most to this article) stories to again link Israel to stories that have nothing to do with Israel.

Independent news sources have confirmed that, again, a certain democracy in the middle east is the epicenter of the organ trade. Not a conspiracy theory, not a slanderous or libelous statement. The Israeli Minister of Health even stood up the the Knesset and admitted it.

Independent sources such as? Stormfront?

Anyway, the Minister of Health never 'admitted' Israel was the "epicenter of the organ trade", nor did they admit and nor is there any proof of any wrong doing in Haiti (which I assumed this article was about).

I'm not surprised those Americans didn't keep up with the news while they were in Haiti. But as their friends and relatives claim they kept in touch I can't imagine why they didn't point out the dangers.

Florida Gov Charlie Crist told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Sunday that his state has taken in 300 Haitian orphans since the quake, with 60 to 80 orphans arriving there Friday night alone.

I can't believe that, it's a really high number. Imagine if the children of New Orleans had been "saved" by a religious or any other group from another country in this way. Imagine the uproar! Yet there must have been at least a couple of children in New Orleans after the flooding in a similar predicament to the Haitian children for a limited timespan. And do you really think these Haitian kids will have a good life in America? Their plight might get public sympathy now, complete with donations and a few placings for select orphans, but after the next world disaster these kids would just be forgotten, left to rot in American orphanages and hating their so-called rescuers who actually just left them in another kind of limbo.

Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities.

Imbeciles. Imagine if someone tried to take an American orphan out of America, with only the permission of the destination country, not permission from America, or from the child's remaining relatives, and no passport. These people have no brains I'm afraid.

Just watched the limited BBC news on it on NHK. It's plain they didn't really even try to get permission to rescue those kids. It's their ambition, as stated on their website, to snatch 100 kids off Haiti's streets in one day and take them out of the country the same day. There's no way they'd get permission in one day, so obviously they don't feel they need permission. Apparently they feel they're above the laws of Haiti. It's no wonder that people get angry at such groups, and although I personally believe they had genuinely good motives at heart I'm angry too, it's just totally irresponsible and if they'd succeeded they'd probably have ended up playing into the hands of criminals unintentionally. How convenient it would be for child traffickers if a charitable group brought 33 children from a quake hit area. Very convenient indeed. Those people are naive at best. They should have tried helping the kids IN Haiti, and going over the borders without the kids to bring in supplies.

When you think god is on your side its easy to justify kidnapping. I am never surprised when the religious act like criminals. In their warped scheme of things anything is justified. That is why right wing christians supported the illegal invasion of Iraq at near 100% levels.

This group should be brought up on racketeering charges. I am sure the plan was to ship these kids to US christian families so they could be brainwashed.

So this is a child trafficking group disguised as a Christian group? I've told you time and time again, be wary of religious groups.

So here we have a group of people believing in an omnipotent and benevolent God, visiting a country that has just had a couple of hundred thousand people suffer a horrible and needless death.

As if this wasnt annoying enough, this group then decides to steal some of their children and plans on sending them to a country where there is a good chance that they will become involved in underage prostitution, with a client base of dudes from the states, that probably go to church every week.

Anyone else annoyed with Christians right mow? Come on guys, if you wanna do your little church club thing every week where you sing about some made up stuff to make you feel like you have some meaning in your life then go ahead. But please stop foisting your beliefs on others and acting like you have moral superiority to others that gives you the right to do stuff like this.

These guys would have known better, had they read the international news in 2007 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Zo%C3%A9%27s_Ark_controversy Very similar case.

while i'm sure the missionaries had good intentions, it's really important to understand and FOLLOW local laws and procedures. they were acting in a sense of ethnocentrism (we'll RESCUE these kids from the haitans!) that unfortunately took precedence over their intended purpose.

johnny,

I doubt it. They were stealing kids to covert them or sell them or both.

@johnnyreb. I would agree with you if this was some bizarre local law that they had broken, but Im pretty sure that taking a group of kids out of the country without documentation and therefore no real way to trace them is pretty much frowned upon in every country in the world.

Ive just seen an interview with the lady that is the apparent spokeswoman for the Christian group. Arrogant and creepy as hell.

Stupid annoying religious freeks. Kick them out of the country.

Another sinister religious group up to no good. And with particularly vulnerable children. How repulsive. When are we going to learn to stop trusting or supporting religious groups?

I just hope the FBI are now looking closely at this lot.

When disaster strikes, a whole bunch of people rush to the area, both locals and foreigners. NGOs and the extra people are needed to help the people from the disaster struck areas. But for various reasons, there are all kinds of subhumans who also go to the same location. Some NGOs even sponsor the subhumans visas.I remember once, when an NGO hired back-packers so that they could easily account for the monies spent on the project of rehabilitation. Due to the selfish acts of people like these abductors, the genuine help offered is sometimes frowned upon.

This group apparently didn't make the required bribe prior to trying to get these children out to a better life.

The whole thing stinks...to high heaven. It is just ridiculously suspect to round up kids on a bus to another country and claim that was to get them out of the disaster zone. There are still HEAPS of legitimate places to go IN Haiti that weren't destroyed and have facilities where these children could be taken in until family could found. If the intent was truly to try and locate any surviving relatives of these children, it would have made more sense for the kids to be temporarily relocated within their own country. Would have been a lot less paperwork for this group and a lot easier logistically when relatives are found. It just doesn't add up.

On the other hand, if these people truly had their hearts in the right places and honest intentions, they were as dumb as posts to think they can just waltz in and save the day without the right procedures. And dumb to not have a clue that delivering these kids into a foreign country the group obviously knew nothing about, could have made the rest of these kids's lives a living hell. Wow. Naive is an understatement.

Anyone else annoyed with Christians right now?

Wait a minute. Those retards or criminals happen to be Christian (and it's not a VIP club, anybody can say he/she is Christian). They only represent themselves. Well I wish them to also get a good lawyer to represent them from now. I hope they will get a very exemplary and mediatized trial... Just to show to the next ones.

But I'm very pessimistic. I don't think the TV watching masses are able to understand. 24 hours after that earthquake, I had a big internet fight with some of my (French) compatriots. We had our case of abductors in Africa a few years ago, so nobody can say they did not suspect anything was fishy. At that point, you can't realistically suspect any NGO in poor kid adoption business to be honest. The whole operation is unfair to poorer countries, it's trading humans, even when paperwork is well done.

Those were not Christian, just 21th century celebrity wannabes. They want to do big PR operations of "saving the world", some "rescue orphans" like the brandgelinas, others rescue dolphins like Bimbo Pannetiere... I prefer that they do the animals and plants. And that works, even if everybody knows that after 2 or 3 years of a real "humanitarian" job, all his actions were just publicity stunts for his own profit, Kouchner lives like a billionaire and has a job in governement now. So the next morning after Haiti's disaster, they started a petition to ask French governement to rapatriate imediatly all the Haitian kids that were being adopted by French bobos. Like : "we have to get them quickly before Haitian autorities block adoptions...". They don't lose time, they'd go there stepping on corpses not yet cold to take their pet-kids. And they are so sure of themselves : "those that criticize us know nothing, they are real orphans, no comparison with people that adopt in dishonnest countries.... we are doing it for the sake of Haitians". Oh come on, before the quake there was already a warning about the questionable "legality" of Haitian adoptions on Foreign Affairs Ministery home page, and about Haitian authorities and UN already trying to freeze such operations.

Doesn't matter, they had scores of airheads signing...

Cos, you are right. Kouchner was a real joke in my opinion. I remember how he was just a few years ago. And then, sudenly with the peace-keeping activities in a few south asian countries he just suddenly got rich. From the Serbian mission he could not have earned that much I think. Oh yes, there are quite a few people not just missionaries, who take the opportunity to become millionannaires when disaster strikes the poor and the innocent.