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Laura Silsby: 33 Haitian Children, a Border Arrest, and a Quiet Release

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Idaho missionary Laura Silsby and nine others were arrested trying to take 33 children across the Dominican border without papers. Most of the children were not orphans. Silsby was convicted only of arranging irregular travel and released with time served.

Jan 29, 2010
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Whose side it served: Neither party

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What the record shows

The group was arrested on Jan. 29, 2010. SOS Children's Villages found most, if not all, of the children had living parents; families said they expected to visit or retrieve them. Bill Clinton, the U.N. relief envoy, urged a swift end to the case on Feb. 5, 2010; the other nine were released, and Silsby was convicted on May 17, 2010 of arranging irregular travel and sentenced to time served. A 2012 Harvard Human Rights Journal article argued the group's actions rose to the level of child trafficking. She later went by Laura Gayler, per a 2016 Idaho Press-Tribune report. The arrest was major international news in early 2010; the reduced charge and release got far less attention, and the story largely disappeared afterward.

The other side

Haitian authorities, not U.S. media, decided the charges; the missionaries said they believed the children were orphans and meant to set up an orphanage.

Sources

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