Idaho Church Group Arrested for Fleeing Haiti With 33 Children

Ten members of a Baptist group in Idaho were arrested for attempting to illegally remove 33 children from Haiti, USA Today reports. The group said it was taking them to an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic, but did not have the required paperwork to do so.

"In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing," said the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby. She and her companions are being held at the judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, but no charges have been filed.

The Haitian government has suspended adoption amid worries that children are especially vulnerable to trafficking in the wake of last month's devastating earthquake. Relief organizations say the temptation is always strong to rescue children from terrible situations, but that doing so can cause all sorts of problems, including taking away children who have family members looking for them.

"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse," said Deb Barry, a child-protection expert with Save the Children. "The possibility of a child being mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."