Port-au-Prince, Haiti ? Ten U.S. Baptists arrested trying to take 33 children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti say they were just trying to do the right thing, applying Christian principles to save Haitian children.

Prime Minister Max Bellerive told The Associated Press Sunday he was outraged by the group’s “illegal trafficking of children” in a country long afflicted by the scourge and by foreign meddling.

But the hard reality on the ground in this desperately poor country — especially after the catastrophic Jan. 12 quake — is that some parents openly attest to their willingness to part with their children if it will mean a better life.

It was a sentiment expressed by all but one of some 20 Haitian parents interviewed at a tent camp Sunday that teemed with children whose toys were hewn from garbage.

“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 — probably my youngest.”

Haiti’s overwhelmed government has halted all adoptions unless they were in motion before the quake amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to being seized and sold.

Without proper documents and concerted efforts to track down their parents, they could be forever separated from family members able and willing to care for them. Bellerive’s personal authorization is now required for the departure of any child.

The orphanage where the children were later taken said at least some of the kids have living parents, who were apparently told that the children were going on an extended holiday from the post-quake misery.

One of those detained is Drew Culberth. The 34-year-old firefighter and father of four from Topeka, Kan., is also a part-time youth pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Topeka.

Friend Joel Culberson says a relative who leads a church in Iowa had asked Culberth to go on the trip. Bethel Baptist Church pastor James Keller said the church willingly gave him time off for the trip, knowing his EMT training would prove valuable.

News of what had happened had everybody worried, and the congregation prayed for him during services Sunday.

The church group’s own mission statement said it planned to spend only hours in the devastated capital, quickly identifying children without immediate families and busing them to a rented hotel in the Dominican Republic without bothering to get permission from the Haitian government.

Whatever its intentions, other child welfare organizations in Haiti called the plan reckless.

The church members, most from Idaho, said they were only trying to rescue abandoned and traumatized children.

“In this chaos the government is in right now, we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told the AP at Haiti’s judicial police headquarters, where she and others were taken after their arrest Friday night trying to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in a bus.