Utah orphans come to U.S. and face another delay

Reported by Barbara Smith

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) Today more than seventy orphans, with adoptive families waiting in Utah and other parts of the nation, waited at the airport in Port ‘O Prince. The plane, that carried Utah volunteers to Haiti Thursday, waited empty nearby. Meanwhile, there was flurry of activity to finish the children’s adoption paperwork so they could get on the plane. A dozen were denied their flight from the earthquake zone because it couldn’t be finished in time.

Thursday, waited empty nearby. Meanwhile, there was flurry of activity to finish the children’s adoption paperwork so they could get on the plane. A dozen were denied their flight from the earthquake zone because it couldn’t be finished in time.
 
The 66 children who got on the plane are headed for Miami and new future. Normally, with paperwork completed in Haiti, they would enter the United States as citizens, but because of the status of their adoptions at the time of the quake, a majority will now enter as refugees and must be processed as such. Laura Trinnaman, Director of For Ever Child,  says” We are just trying to make sense of how these kids will be coming, who has custody of them, and what the process is for adoptive matched families to go through to finalize and adoption.”
 
Some of the parents with children on the flight have already received letters from a federal refugee organization saying their children will be taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement to a children’s home in Miami. Trinnaman says “The kids will come through and be cared for until the point, that could be hours, or that could be days, until the point the U.S. government can deem the adoptive families appropriate to take custody of the kids.”
 
The adoptive families have already met all of the U.S. and Haiti requirements for adoption. “Not only have they gone through meeting all of the requirements for adoptive families,  for the U.S. and the state in which the reside, which includes home studies, and criminal background checks, they have also now all completed Homeland Security Refugee Services documents that duplicate their criminal clearances. They have now been through three very strict processes to get to this point.”
 
There is hope the children will be allowed to leave with their new families within the next three days. Until then, the children will be cared for in Miami.
 
Meanwhile, For Every Child continues to struggle to care for the hundreds of orphans in their Haiti orphanages who must stay there for the foreseeable future. They live from shipment to shipment, sent down wherever they can find room on humanitarian planes. Yesterday, they received word their infants were out of formula, and were being fed water to keep them alive. Today, a pallet arrived with enough to get them through until next week. Next week another corner of a flight has been dedicated to the orphans. They hope to collect enough milk-based formula, and cloth diapers to keep the children going until next time. They need formula and cloth diapers on-hand so they can put them on planes at a moments notice. If you can help them provide formula and diapers send them to their office at:
 For Every Child Adoption Services
Foyer de Sion Orphanage Relief   
125 East Main Street, #204
American Fork, Utah 84003