U.S. citizens arrested while helping Haitian orphans, church member says

Sean Lankford said his wife and daughter were among 10 people arrested at the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic as they were moving 33 orphans to new housing.

Lankford, a member of Central Valley Baptist Church, said the Meridian congregation had been working with an organization to build an orphanage in the Dominican Republic for several years and was ready to build when the earthquake hit. Members quickly arranged to help a pastor whose orphanage in Haiti had collapsed, Lankford said.

“They’ve been working with governments on both sides for a while,” Lankford said.

The eight Idahoans from Meridian and from East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls are working with Idaho-based New Life Children¹s Refuge. The group included one person from Texas and one from Kansas.

Despite their good intentions, the Americans, the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 quake, stepped into a firestorm in Haiti, where leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that lost or parentless children are vulnerable to child trafficking.

The Idaho group had rented hotel rooms in the Dominican Republic for up to six months to house the children while the orphanage is being built, Lankford said.

“They really believed that they had all the paperwork that they needed,” he said.

Lankford heard from his wife, Corina, and daughter,
Nicole, when they arrived at the border Friday. There, they were told
they needed other papers; one group leader returned to Port-au-Prince with authorities to sort things out, Lankford said Saturday.

“This morning, we stopped hearing from them.” He
said he doesn¹t believe they are in danger in Haitian custody, but was
waiting at the church Saturday night with others to hear from the U.S. Embassy.

State Department officials told the AP that consular
officials were seeking access to the detained Americans. The children
were being housed at an SOS Children¹s Village outside the capital.

A Reuters news report said the five men and five
women were arrested for suspicion of being involved in illegal
adoptions. Government officials said they fear that illegal adoptions
are on the rise; they said the Americans had no documents to prove they
had authority to take the children.

Laura Sillsby of Boise told Reuters from a jail cell at Haiti’s Judicial Police headquarters that the group “had permission from the Dominican Republic” government to bring the children there.

She added: “They accuse us of children trafficking.
This is something I would never do. We were not trying to do something
wrong.”

—

(c) 2010, The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho).

Visit The Idaho Statesman online at http://www.idahostatesman.com.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.