10 American missionaries held after trying to take children out of Haiti

The Americans, Baptist church members from Idaho and other states, said they were taking the children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and deny any wrongdoing. But Haitian authorities said members of the group, who have little experience in international adoptions, did not have permission to leave the country with the children.

On Monday, the church members were being held in a dank room at the judicial police headquarters, where they had not yet been charged, as Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and other Haitian authorities met with U.S. officials to discuss their fate.

Fortil Mazar, a prosecutor in Port-au-Prince, said members of the group face kidnapping and child-smuggling charges. In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the United States is helping in the investigation but has not yet determined the "appropriate course" of action.

The case reflects a growing fear in this poverty-stricken country, where the government is on life support and thousands of children were left without parents after the devastating earthquake that struck Jan. 12. Adoptions in Haiti are common, according to agencies that help children, but so is the trafficking of children.