EVIDENCE GROWS AGAINST JORGE PUELLO; RELEASE OF KIDJACKERS MAY BE DELAYED

Big news popping out of DR tonight.

The New York Times reports a growing amount of evidence to connect New Life Children's Refuge "legal adviser" Jorge Puello to a sex trafficking ring operating in El Salvador. The trafficking suspect, who police believe is Puello, worked with Pablo Nasser, the former deputy director of the Salvadoran Immigration Service to lure foreign girls and women into the country and sell them into prostitution.

The latest break comes from two sources: (1) photographs that appear to match Puello and the trafficking suspect and (2) public and court records linking Puello to a Florida address that is tied to the suspect.

Hey, I thought Jorge didn't have a passport!

Here's what the Times says:

The Salvadoran police asked their Dominican counterparts on Friday to arrest Mr. Puello. “Dominican authorities should proceed to detain him,” said Augusto Cotto, deputy director of investigations for the Salvadoran police. “If the fingerprints coincide, we’d begin the process to try to bring him to El Salvador.”

Eric Álvarez, a spokesman for the Salvadoran chief prosecutor’s office, said Friday that judicial officials had determined that photographs of Mr. Puello in Haiti matched those of the suspect wanted in El Salvador.

and

Asked about his identity [by police] Mr. Puello said that he had been married to Valerie Velasquez and that their home address in the United States had been in Plantation, Fla. Public documents and court records seem to tie, by name and birth date, Mr. Puello and the Florida street address to the suspect in the Salvadoran case.

Just for fun, I ran an Intellius search for Jorge and Valerie and found them in Plantation. Of course, the police, which I'm not, used something better than that. I have been unable to find a home address for Jorge or his brother Alejandro in Dominican online phone books.

The new revelations may keep the New Lifers in their cells for awhile. Judge Saint-Vil was expected to order some kind of release on Monday, but he has made clear that he wants the Puello situation settled before he does anything:

Judge Saint-Vil said he had no choice but to delay the group’s release until he knew more about Mr. Puello’s identity, any ties he might have to trafficking and what, if anything, the Americans knew about him...

...“I am working as fast as I can,” Judge Saint-Vil said. “But I must first understand Mr. Puello.”

The judge said an official from the American Embassy had called him Thursday night and asked for any information the judge had about Mr. Puello. He said the embassy would provide him on Monday with whatever additional information it was able to find about Mr. Puello.

Three days is an awfully short time to make a determination on the "good intentions" of the child lifters in light of Puello's suspected vocation. No decision should be made until the prints are made or other compelling evidence presented. If the prints match, then I think the "good intentions" of most or all of the New Lifers is gonna deep six., though no doubt they'll argue they were duped and innocent souls just going about God's orphan work.

I've got more to say about this, but it's nearly 5 in the morning and I'm going to bed.

But two more things:

As an addenda to my previous blog about who "hired" Puello to "advise" the New Lifers, we have this from the New York Times now:

Asked about the judge’s decision to delay the Americans’ release, Louis Gary Lissade, a lawyer for one detainee, voiced frustration. “My client never chose Mr. Puello,” said Mr. Lissade, a former Haitian minister of justice who represents Jim Allen. “In fact, I don’t even know whether anyone chose Mr. Puello to represent the group.”

Which again, brings up the question: why did Puello approach the Idaho families and offer his services? Did he already have an in with some of them, particularly Sean Lankford, whose daughter Charisa had traveled to DR and Haiti several times with Laura Silsby and may have known him from previous trips? Was it a cover for his own role in the kidjacking? Did he think he'd make a nifty bundle from the church folks who saw Puello as God's unfolding in their lives?

Finally, for a good read on the case from a non-adoption angle check out Twelfth Bough who has an intriguing theory that Puello, who claimed to be "president of the Sephardic community" in DR, was running people through Chabad. I have to mull that over a bit.

Jorge Puello: Not a lawyer after all

For my initial report on Jorge Puello, please go directly below this entry.

The Associated Press and CBS News reported Friday afternoon that Jorge Puello, "legal adviser" to the New Life adoption traffickers, as suspected, has no license to practice law in The Dominican Republic. AP reporter Frank Bajak writes:

Jorge Puello, who has been a high-profile advocate for the American Baptists as they navigate the Haitian justice system, is in apparent violation of Dominican law for failing to register with the local bar association or obtain a license, said Jose Parra, vice president of the Dominican Lawyers Association.

Parra said his organization was still investigating the situation and might file a complaint with the Justice Department, which could pursue criminal charges.

Last night I asked some questions about Puello's relationship to CVBC and Laura Silisby. I was particularly interested in whether Puello and Silsby had a pre-quake relationship (about what?) which would have greased the way for Puello to slide in and "advise" the prisoners, their families, and their churches.

We now have this small statement from Sean Lankford, whose wife Corinna and daughter Nichole are being held in Haiti, which suggests that either the folks in Idaho are just plumb dumb or that they had reason to trust Puello, sight unseen. (my emphasis).

Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and daughter are among those detained, said Puello provided his services for free.

"He's really shown himself to be completely trustworthy, and I truly believe he has done everything to help our people and to help us," he said in a telephone interview from Idaho.

Lankford said Puello contacted relatives of the Americans to volunteer his services.

This contradicts Thursday's Times report:

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

While the names of "other lawyers" (i.e., real lawyers) went unmentioned, they are attorneys from the pro bono Christian advocacy organization Liberty Legal Institute headquartered in Plano, Texas and WilmerHale, the K-Street multinational firm Liberty Legal signed up to spring Amarillo contractor Jim Allen and probably Allen's inlaws, Eastside Baptist Church pastor Paul Thompson and Silas "Buck" Thompson."

The Dream Team is (co)headed by Reginald J. Brown, (right) Vice Chair of the firm's Public Policy and Strategy Group. Brown has a long list of very high profile government and multinational clients, is a former board member of Hewlett-Packard (them again!) and is a former special assistant to George W. Bush. The other co-leader is WilmerHale partner Jennifer O'Connor, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the United States Department of Labor under the first Bush, and former special assistant to Bill Clinton. Allen's attorneys have issued a statement that Puello does not represent Allen. I hope to write more about Liberty Legal, Jim Allen, and his attorneys this weekend.

These are not lawyers to be trifled with, and Puello is a trifle.

It looks like he's laying low--hiding out from Interpol who has a warrant on him, the Salvadoran National Police who want his fingerprints, and Judge Bernard Saint-Vil who's investigating him. Oh, and Homeland Security is looking into him. The Idaho folks must be having cats the size of mastodons.

The Puello Consultation website has been taken down. When the AP attempted to contact him yesterday:

...Puello declined to comment in a brief telephone interview, saying he would be busy in court representing a U.S. firm seeking to establish a business in the Dominican Republic. He could not be located in court and did not return later phone calls.

An emotional Puello, did, however, give a short and bizarre interview earlier in the day with ABC News denying that he had done anything wrong An incurious ABC news gatherer (or to be nice, maybe a news editor cut the meat out, but we doubt it) reports the following:

But Jorge Puello denies any wrong doing and told us one reason he took the missionaries' case is because he knows what it's like to be falsely accused.

"If I had somebody that would have done what I did for them, I would not be in this big mess that I have for past years. So that's why this case touch me.

What is he talking about? Puello was only "falsely accused" after he took the missionaries' case, or else he's been "falsely accused" before. And if so, when and what for? Or maybe he's a time traveler.

Ed Murrow must be spinning out of control.

Addeenda:

Who is Jorge Puello?

I've been curious about Jorge Puello since his name appeared about 10 days ago as the legal adviser for the New Lifers. Puello made a big splat on CNN when he complained about the severe conditions under which his clients were jailed: "No air conditioning! No Electricity! Very disturbing!"

According to news reports Puello was hired by Laura Silby's church, Central Valley Baptist, after either the church or Laura Silsby and her gang rejected the attorney (or attorneys) recommended by American Consular Services. Puello, in turn, hired Haitian attorney Edwin Coq to represent the detainees, even though Coq speaks Creole and no English. What to make of that nonsense?

Last week, according to whose story you believe, Puello fired Coq, claiming that the Haitian had demanded a $60,000 fee and attempted to bribe the prisoners back to the US. Coq denied the accusation, and said he quit because the families back in Idaho never sent him the $60,000 he needed to take the case. Sources inside of Haiti who know Coq claim that he is an "honest young lawyer" and refused to believe Puello's claim. Coq has complained to the press that Puello has ruined his reputation.

Over the weekend I spent quite a bit of time looking for information on Jorge Puello. I could find no listing for him as a Dominican attorney. What I did find was Puello Consulting/Abogados Consultores, operated by Jorge Puello and his brother Alejandro, located at Avenida Duarte 359, in Santo Domingo.

The company's webpage, describes the firm:

Puello Consulting is a Firm of Attorneys, Notaries & Business Consultants that renders full legal services specialized in commercial, corporate and business fields providing the counseling with the “legal insight with business instinct” required for individuals and companies decision makers in the Dominican Republic or in other countries with Law Firms correspondents.

Established in 2005, has earned a solid reputation in successfully offering personalized professional services of the highest quality with a winning attitude and determination for customer satisfaction which has distinguished us in the legal and business marketplace.

This intro is followed by a long laundry list of legal services: including acquisitions, mergers and alliances, banking and finance, consumer protection and antitrust, corporate services, collections, family law, immigration and naturalization, intellectual property, trade, investment, taxes, public and private contracting, real estate, and trust.

Not a word about criminal law--domestic or international. And no word anywhere of how CVBC hooked up with Puello, and why it would hire what appears to be a civil law outsourcer with no criminal law section to take on a high profile international incident. It only got curiouser and curiouser with the hiring of Coq and the dust-up that followed.

Bernard Saint-Vil, the presiding judge in the New Life case, is curious, too. According to the February 11, 2010 New York Times, he plans to open an inquiry into Puello's activities after learning that police in El Salvador are investigating whether Puello heads a trafficking ring involving Central American and Caribbean women and girls.

Picking up from the NYT:

The head of the Salvadoran border police, Commissioner Jorge Callejas, said in a telephone interview that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport that identified him as Jorge Anibal Torres Puello led a human trafficking ring that recruited Dominican women and under-age Nicaraguan girls by offering them jobs and then putting them to work as prostitutes in El Salvador.

Mr. Puello said he did not even have a passport. When Mr. Callejas was shown a photograph taken in Haiti of Mr. Puello, Mr. Callejas said he thought it showed the man he was seeking. He said he would try to arrest Mr. Puello on suspicion of luring women into prostitution and taking explicit photographs of them that were then posted on Internet sites. “It’s him, the same beard and face,” Mr. Callejas said in an interview on Thursday. “It has to be him.”

Judge Saint-Vil also said he thought that the photo of the trafficking suspect in a Salvadoran police file appeared to be the same man he had met in court. He said he intended to begin his own investigation into whether a trafficking suspect had been working with the Americans detained in Haiti.

“I was skeptical of him because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”

The judge said he would request assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to look into Mr. Puello’s background. A spokesman for the department said American officials were playing a supporting role in the investigation surrounding the Americans, providing “investigative support as requested.”

That Puello, has no passport is an odd circumstance for a man who claims to have a large law practice with international commercial clients. In fact, there is some doubt if Puello is actually a lawyer. The NYT, verifying my own research, says that records in the College of Lawyers in the DR has no one with his name listed.

Again from the article:

Mr. Puello said he had a law license and was part of a 45-member law firm. But his office in Santo Domingo turned out to be a humble place, which could not possibly fit 45 lawyers. Mr. Puello’s brother Alejandro said that the firm had another office in the central business district, but he declined to provide an address. (NOTE: the article does not say if the "humble office" was located at Duarte or another location)

Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I’m president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We’re not going to charge these people a dime.”

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.

Even if Puello is found to be the wrong man in the Salvadoran investigation, there are still questions:

• Is Jorge Puello a lawyer?

• Why did Central Valley Baptist Church reject consular recommendations and hire what appears to be a outsourcer with seeingly no criminal expertise to defend its members?

• Why did Puello hire a Haitian lawyer who couldn't communicate in any meaningful way with his clients and then accuse the lawyer of attempting to bribe the court,

• Did Puello and Laura Silsby have a legal or personal pre-earthquake relationship, which led CVBC to hire him as legal adviser; possibly a relationship regarding the leasing of the Puerto Plata Diocese-owned Education and Training Center in Cabarete that was to be converted into the temporary New Life Children's Refuge?

• Was Puello involved in the attempt to move the "orphans" across the border?

• Why is Puello lying about being paid by the New Lifers? (And I believe he is lying)

• Who is paying Puello and who is funding the defense?
  

And, if Puello is the right man:

• Did he plan to traffick the children?

Or...

• is this a simple matter of scavengers scavenging scavengers?

Haitians Release Interrogation Tape: Abductees cry for their mothers

I'm working on another piece and won't comment on this right now. The video, released by Haitian authorities, shows them interrogating Silsby & Co. Many of the children are crying for their mothers and want to go home, while Laura Silsby tries to explain her "good intentions" Silsby, unlike, the public persona she has carefully crafted, is shaken. The article accompanying the video is here.


Watch CBS News Videos Online


The page also features a February 5 CBS video of a "sincere" Silsby proclaiming the group meant no disrespect to the Haitian government and had done "nothing wrong." You may have already seen it, but it's worth archiving.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

On a sidenote, The Idaho Statesman this morning published more on Laura Silsby's financial your-check-is-in-the-mail woes. (Yes, there are more than what we already heard about!) Laura Silsby's business couldn't pay rent, taxes. BTW, the company's Better Business Bureau accreditation "expired" on February 4, 2010. No doubt!

And, how have I forgetten this? Personalshoppper.com was promising matching funds up to $50,000 for various children's and school projects. I can't get the URL to work as a direct link, but you can cut and paste this: http://www.personalshopper.com/jsp/kcl/what_others_are_saying.jsp

Laura Silsby: Loses her Grip on the Gang; Did the Con Get Conned?

This is the first part of a 2-part blog, which was becoming too long for comfortable consumption. Part 1 is limited to the latest story coming out of Haiti on the break-up of Silsby's onsite New Lifers and allegations of attempted court bribery last week.

The Laura Silsby child lifting case just keeps getting stranger.

MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders reported Saturday that one of Laura Silsby's "missionaries" slipped a note to his producer Don Wood during an off camera interview. Signed by eight of the 10 prisoners, the note said the detainees feared for their lives. And seemingly feared Silsby.

The 3 minute broadcast is below.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here are the relevant parts:

• We fear for our lies here in Haiti. There is corruption and extortion.

• Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid.

• Please you must listen. We have no way to call. Court will not let us have a say about truth for us We only came as volunteers. We had nothing to do with any documents. We have been lied to.

******

The Associated Press picks it up from there, reporting Sunday morning (Feb. 7) that Edwin Coq, the Haitian lawyer representing the group in court last week, has been fired by Jorge Puello, the Dominican attorney retained by the detainees' relatives, after they rejected the lawyer recommended to them by US Consular Services.

Puello in turn, hired Coq to work the Haitian end. Puello, the guy who a few days ago complained to CNN about living conditions in the jail, claims (and what's left of the Haitian government isn't denying it so far) that Coq tried to bribe Silsby & Co out of jail and out of the country with $60,000 he'd requested from the families for his fee, even though he told the AP on Friday that he was taking no fee. (No mention on Puello's fee, if he has one).

In another story from CNN Sunday, Coq claims he was actually hired by Eric Thompson, husband of detainee Carla Thompson, and had quit the case, not been fired as Puello claimed.The London Sunday Telegraph reported that Coq was preparing to resign anyway because he had not received money promised him by the families of this clients.

Puello has a different story. He says:

Coq initially requested a $10,000 fee, but kept asking for bigger and bigger amounts. He said that when Coq reached $60,000, he said he (Coq) could guarantee it would lead to the Americans' release. Coq orchestrated "some kind of extortion with government officials" that would have led to the release of nine of the 10 missionaries...He had some people inside the court that asked him for money, and he was part of this scheme."

Despite Coq's earlier claim of pro bono work, he does not deny he had the money (or at least some of it) , now claiming it was his fee (that didn't exist on Friday), not a bribe.

I have worked for 10 people for four days working all hours. Look at what hour I'm working now responding to these calls. I have the right to this money.

The story gets more interesting since both Puello and Coq have thrown Silsby under her own bus. At the Friday hearing, pleading for provisional release of all but Silsby (bail where bond is not required, which would permit the prisoners to return to the States until trial), he told the court that in his opinion the nine had been well-intentioned but naive volunteers duped by their leader who had lied to them that she had the legal documents to transport the children to DR. Puello agrees that Silsby lied to everyone else. He seems to have little interest in defending her.

The God that failed. The bribe that failed.
The story is so confusing. Silsby is so slippery. The other defendants so ignorant. To make things more complicated, Coq speaks Creole and no English, and has been working with Silsby through interpreters whose language skills seen to be questionable. Thus, we have a story full of questions, inconsistencies, conjectures, and holes making it difficult to offer sane observations. So far, MSM has not investigated the bribery allegations, instead taking them at face value. I can't decide without more information, though I can easily see the the morally deficient Silsby trying to buy her way out of her jam--with somebody else's money

These are some of my random meandering thoughts from the last 24 hours. I keep running them around in my head. They tend to change, so tomorrow I may have a whole set of new observations and conjectures, especially if and when new information is released.

• Why would the families or Puello hire an attorney who doesn't speak English or have decent translators? Surely there are better choices, even in the midst of Haiti's chaos. After all, Consular Services suggested a lawyer (who presumably spoke English). Why was this lawyer rejected?
  

• Were funds transferred to Coq, and if so, how much?

• Did Coq, in fact, have $60,000 in hand and did he want more? The report that he planned to resign from the case because he'd not received the funds promised suggests he didn't have the $60,00, the last amount the Puello mentioned, or that he wanted even more.

• Were, in fact, bribes offered to the court, or is this just a lawyer smackdown? If so, how much was offered and to whom for what? Since the Haitian government with its history of corruption has much bigger things to worry about right now, I don't expect this to be pursued, unless it's linked to something bigger. The Haitian and US governments just want this to go away.
  

• Was Laura Silsby aware of the bribe offer? As the "spokesperson" and self-appointed group herderm did she, in fact, suggest it under that self-made privilege she likes to throw around while the rest of the group sat on the floor singing praise songs? Reflecting on Silsby's murky financial history, lack of ethics in Idaho and Haiti, and her long failed history of rules-are-for-other-people lifestyle--what I call Silsby exceptionalism--it is almost inevitable that she would try to toss her trick bag stuffed with other people's money into a Haitian judiciary sinkhole and then credit God with their release--a release that only the delusional psychic grifter and her followers (maybe) could actually believe would happen. Though Silsby has complained she couldn't communicate well with Coq, would that prevent her from entangling him in her latest scheme through some other source?

• If Coq offered a bribe independent of Silsby, did Silsby know about it at some point?
  

• No matter where the bribe initiated, (if it did) did the other prisoners know about it? The group's specific reference to "Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid" tells me that they believe that Silsby not only lied about their rescue mission, but continues to lie to authorities and themselves; thus, putting them in some kind of danger. Would a failed bribe attempt (or rumor of attempt) fueled by their baby stealing plot be enough for them to fear retribution from people who didn't get the pay-off? Or do they actually fear Silsby?
  

• If there was an attempted bribe, who dropped the dime on Coq?

• Is Silsby expendable? Obviously she's the loony ringleader that can't stop mugging for the press, but beyond that, she offers no financial incentive to acquit. While the other nine have families to at least somehow support their attempt to repatriate Silsby has nothing but a foreclosed home, a failed business, lawsuits, a ruined reputation, and a lot of disillusioned churchies who won't be eager to donate to her defense fund.

• Was the whole thing a con? Did the con get conned?

I am particularly struck by Silsby's performance (and this is indeed performance) before Friday's court appearance. News videos, some of which can be seen in the above video, show a blissed out Laura Silsby leaving for court, patronizing smile on her made-up face, explaining patiently to her dumbo audience, that God will set them all free. She and her crew, in fact, took their packed bags with them to court, expecting to fly out of Port au Prince later in the day. Was her confidence based on her incessant phone conversations in her head with God or did she believe throwing around money would make the problem--and them--go away? I've been around a lot of evangelicals and fundamentalists over the years, but I can't remember anyone this jazzed on her personal interpretation of God' will. The woman just isn't plugged in.

Instead of the walls of Jericho falling at God's proxy commando, the ten prisoners were officially charged with child abduction and criminal association and remanded to new jails: the men to the severely damaged national penitentiary (all the prisoners escaped after the earthquake); the women to a women's prison in Petionville. Since Haitian law is based on the Napoleonic Code, anyone charged is considered guilty until proven innocent. The court has up to three months to decide the next move.

Incredibly, after the bad news that they might sit in jail for another three months, Silsby, enjoying her 15 minutes of fame overtime, gave a thumbs up to the press, (see above with her nanny Carissa Coulter) telling the press, "I feel good. I'm trusting God." Two days later her "missionaries" sent their note: "Laura wants to control. We believe lying. We are afraid."

"It smelled like trafficking to me" -- US Orphanage Director on Silsby & Gang

This nugget slipped through my fingers earlier this week. As far as I know, no one has picked up on the significance I think it has.

Haiti judge quizzes US missionaries over child case was published February 3, 2010 by the BBC. The article includes an interview with Hal Nungester, director of HIS Home for Children which underwent a babylift I wrote about earlier. (You need to see the video from the link above. The full length article that you click on at the bottom of the video has a greatly edited version that excludes Nungester as does the article.)

BBC: The director of this orphanage was contacted by the American missionaries but was suspicious.

Nungester: We're very cautious about anything that could even appear like traffiicking--child trafficking--and it just smelled like child trafficking to me.

The same day CBS News correspondent Bill Whittaker also interviewed Nungester:

CBS News has learned the Americans contacted at least two orphanages in Port-au-Prince after the quake. The director of this one turned them away and warned what they were doing was wrong.

"They were looking for 100 orphans to take to the DR, the Dominican Republic," Hal Nungester, with the H.I.S. Home for Children told CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. "They had no paperwork. They had no authorization from the U.S. government, from the Haitian government, or from anyone involved. They were just taking kids. That fits right in with what I would classify as child trafficking."

We have heard stories that the team went orphanage to orphanage looking for children to collect for their mismanaged, ill-thought social experiment, but unless I missed it, this is the first time I've seen an American orphanage director and fellow missionary come forward publicly with his suspicions. I'm sure the interviews were longer than this, and I'd love to see them.

Also note in the opening of the video, Laura Silsby, when asked if she believed she owed the government of Haiti an apology, she says, she doesn't and goes on to say things are working out with God's help. This was before the was were remanded back to the slammer.

******

I am currently working on two new blogs, but am stuck with some fact checking. I hope to have one or both up soon.

CUB Statement on Haiti

CUB: Concerned United Birthparents had issued a statement regarding Haiti. It is linked on the sidebar at the right under Organizational Statements. Here is an excerpt:

As the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its partners – including the Haitian Government and the Red Cross – establish safe spaces for the hundreds of thousands of children separated from their families before and after the earthquake, and begin to register all unaccompanied minors, CUB urges the governments of the U.S. and Haiti to halt any further airlifts of children or any new adoptions.

In addition, CUB urges that any groups with clear or potential conflicts of interest – such as adoption agencies and ministries – be removed from the decision-making process about how best to serve Haiti’s children. Humanitarian policies should be applied on a case-by-case basis for those children whose legal adoption had already been approved, and were in the process of being adopted, with the support of the latest and best practices in the field. “But,” Cullen says, “all other pending adoptions should be immediately suspended.”

Haitians living in the U.S. should get help to locate their youngest relatives on the island, and the transfer of any children with documented parents or family members in the U.S. should be expedited, for temporary or permanent placement.

Thanks, CUB!