“We intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary,” she said, standing behind a door of thick metal bars in pedal pushers, sandals and a blouse printed with palm trees. “These kind of children are sold across the border for the price of a chicken. We wanted to give them lives of joy and dignity in God’s love.”

But SOS Children’s Villages, an Austrian organization that runs the orphanage in Port-au-Prince where the children have been temporarily placed, said at least one of the children, an 8-year-old girl, told workers, “I am not an orphan,” according to the group’s Web site. The girl said she thought her mother had arranged a short vacation for her.

Haitian officials said that several of the children had parents, and that, unfortunately, this turn of events was one they had anticipated.

Fearful of the possibility that unscrupulous traffickers would take advantage of Haiti’s sundered justice system to take children from poor families for illegal adoptions, prostitution or slavery, the government had halted all adoptions except those already in motion before the earthquake. Mr. Bellerive’s signature is now required for the departure of any child.

For the government, the arrests provided an opportunity to send a strong message, and the message was outrage. “If people want to help children of Haiti,” said Marie-Laurence Jocelin Lassègue, a government spokeswoman, “this is not the way to do it.

“There can be no questions about taking our children off the streets,” she added. “It is wrong. And those who do so will be judged.”

Although many of the country’s judicial and law enforcement structures, including the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court and numerous police stations, lie in ruins, Haitian officials said they were exploring options for prosecuting the Americans in Haiti. But several officials acknowledged that if there was to be any trial at all, it would probably be in the United States.