Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift

From the article:

"But for 12 of the children, last month’s airlift transported them from one uncertain predicament to another. As it turns out, those children — between 11 months and 10 years old — were not in the process of being adopted, might not all even be orphans and are living in a juvenile care center here while the authorities determine whether they have relatives in Haiti who are able to take care of them.

...

Matt Chandler, a spokesman at the Department of Homeland Security, said: 'This was an extraordinary situation. There wasn’t the benefit of time. And there was a gut decision that the administration believed was in the best interests of the children.'

Child-protection advocates, who generally believe that hastily removing unaccompanied children from areas hit by disasters risks severing family bonds and exposing the children to further trauma, took a different view."