In other news, six US-bound orphans seized by Haitian police despite having their papers in order remained in a government-run nursery more than two days later, the orphanage director said.
The seizure of the orphans and the brief detention of their escorts on Saturday came amid fears that foreigners are exploiting the post-quake chaos to illegally take children from the country — a perception fueled by an ongoing case involving 10 US Baptist missionaries.
“The youngest has developed diarrhea and is very dehydrated,” said Jan Bonnema of Prinsburg, Minnesota, founder and director with her husband, Bud, of the Children of The Promise orphanage, where the six children originated.
Bonnema, whose orphanage is located in the northern city of Cap-Haitien, said late on Monday that the children had been bound for the US via Miami, where their adoptive parents were waiting for them.
Police detained the children and the four women escorting them, including the orphanage’s Irish field director and one US adoptive mother, Sarah Thacker of Ferbus Falls, Minnesota, as they were about to depart from Port-au-Prince airport on Saturday, Bonnema said.
“They were just inside the terminal. They hadn’t gone through immigration,” she said in a telephone interview from Minnesota, because they were waiting for US embassy staff to come with adoption papers signed by Haiti’s prime minister.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has intervened on behalf of the women. She told The Associated Press that the orphanage is legitimate and said the adopting families in Minnesota have been working with her office.
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