PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Nine of the 10 Americans detained in Haiti for trying to take 33 Haitian children to the Dominican Republic met with a Haitian judge on Monday but no deal was struck on their release, NBC News reported.
The Americans, members of a Baptist church group from Idaho, were being held pending a decision on whether they will be tried on child trafficking charges.
Haitian officials said they are talking with U.S. diplomats about whether the Americans, who contend they were only trying to save orphaned or traumatized children, should be sent to the United States for prosecution.
Haiti's prime minister says it's clear to him the 10 American Baptists who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the quake-ravaged country "knew what they were doing was wrong."
Prime Minister Max Bellerive also tells The Associated Press his country is open to having the Americans tried in the United States.
Bellerive says some of the children -- aged 2 months to 12 years -- have parents who are alive. The government is attempting to locate them.
He says it needs to be determined whether the Americans were acting in good faith -- as they claim -- or are child traffickers.
The Americans, mostly from Idaho, have been held since their arrest Friday night trying to enter the Dominican Republic with the children.
The aborted Baptist "rescue mission" has become a major distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors. Haiti's courts and justice ministry were destroyed in the disaster, which also killed many judicial officials.
But the government insisted Monday that the Americans — however well-intentioned — must be prosecuted to send a strong message against child trafficking.
"There can be no question of taking our children off the streets and out of the country," Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelin Lassegue said. "They will be judged. ... That's what is important."
Since their arrest Friday near the border, the church group has been held inside two small concrete rooms in the same judicial police headquarters building where ministers have makeshift offices and give disaster response briefings. They have not yet been charged.
One of their lawyers said they were being treated poorly: "There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing," Attorney Jorge Puello told the AP by phone from the Dominican Republic, where the Baptists hoped to shelter the children in a rented beach hotel.
One of the Americans, Charisa Coulter of Boise, Idaho, was being treated Monday at the University of Miami's field hospital near the capital's international airport. Looking pale and speaking with difficulty from a green Army cot, the 24-year-old Coulter said she had either severe dehydration or the flu. A diabetic, she initially thought her insulin had gone bad in the heat.
Two Haitian police officers stood besides the cot, guarding her.
"They're treating me pretty good," she said, adding that Haitian police didn't bring her group any food or water, but that U.S. officials have delivered water and MREs to eat. "I'm not concerned. I'm pretty confident that it will all work out," she said.
While the U.S. Baptists said they were only trying to rescue abandoned children from the disaster zone, investigators were trying to determine how the Americans got the children, and whether any of the traffickers that have plagued the impoverished country were involved.
Their detained spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, conceded that she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents, but told the AP from detention that the group was "just trying to do the right thing" amid the chaos.
The 33 kids, ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years and with their names written in tape on their shirts, were being sheltered in a temporary children's home, where some told aid workers that they have surviving parents. Lassegue said the Social Affairs Ministry was trying to find them.
"One (9-year-old) girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that," said George Willeit, a spokesman for the SOS Children's Village.
Foreigners adopting children from the developing world have grabbed headlines recently — Madonna tried to adopt a girl from Malawi amid criticism from locals, while Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have a burgeoning multicultural brood.
But in Haiti, a long tradition of foreign military intervention coupled with the earthquake that destroyed much of the capital and plunged it even deeper into poverty, have made this issue even more emotionally charged. Of 20 Haitian parents interviewed in a tent camp by the AP on Sunday, only one said she would not give up her children to give them a chance at a better life.
"Some parents I know have already given their children to foreigners," said Adonis Helman, 44. "I've been thinking how I will choose which one I may give."
"My parents died in the earthquake. My husband has gone. Giving up one of my kids would at least give them a chance," said Saintanne Petit-Frere, 40, a mother of six. "My only fear is that they would forget me, but that wouldn't affect my decision."
Haiti's overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the earthquake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold. Sex trafficking has been rampant in Haiti. Prime Minister Max Bellerive's personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.
"For UNICEF, what is important is that for children separated from their parents, we do everything possible to have their families traced and to reunite them," said Kent Page, a spokesman for the group in Haiti. "They have to be protected from traffickers or people who wish to exploit these children."
The arrested Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. The churches are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest Protestant denomination and has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide, but they decided to mount their own "rescue mission" following the earthquake.
