The US embassy in Haiti said yesterday that ten US citizens were being held in Haiti for "alleged violations of Haitian laws related to immigration," following reports they tried to leave the country with 33 Haitian children.
"American diplomats have visited the detained Americans and are in communication with Haitian authorities," said the embassy in a statement.
"As always, US Embassy officials will take all appropriate steps to ensure the well-being of US citizens detained abroad."
Haiti's Culture and Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said earlier that police had arrested nine US citizens - members of a US Christian ministry group - as they tried to enter the Dominican Republic with a bus-load of children.
No details on the discrepancy over the number of Americans detained were immediately available.
Aramick Louis, Haiti's secretary of state for public security, said the detainees were being held on suspicion of seeking to leave the country with children who did not have documentation, adding that a judge would hear the case and determine whether to move forward.
"Tomorrow or the day after the government will decide," Mr Louis told reporters.
"The Haitian justice (system) will do its job," he insisted.
Earlier Haitian Social Affairs Minister Yves Christallin said the police arrested five men and five women with US passports in a case that centres on an Idaho-based church group.
"This is an abduction, not an adoption," he said, identifying the Americans as members of a charity called New Life Children's Refuge.
It is thought that Americans travelled to Haiti via the Dominican Republic on January 22.
The Haitian government has tightened its travel restrictions for children in the country, and said the prime minister for the time being will have to sign off on every minor's departure abroad.
A man identified as the father of one of the detained Americans told CNN that his daughter's and her fellow church members' sole aim was to provide aid and relief to needy Haitian orphans.
"Their attempt was to share the best. They want to bring kids out who have no home or parents, who have no hope. And this was an attempt to give them the hope that they have lost in Haiti," the man told CNN in Idaho.