Allison Quets' flight to Canada with the twins she gave up for adoption landed her in a federal courthouse Monday in Syracuse, N.Y., and may hurt her chances of ever seeing those children again.

On Monday, a federal magistrate ordered her transfer to Raleigh, where she will face a charge of international parental kidnapping.

If convicted, Quets, 49, of Orlando, Fla., faces up to three years in prison. After she took the twins to Canada, a Florida judge revoked Quets' once-a-month court-ordered visitation with 17-month-old twins, Holly and Tyler. Quets, who underwent in-vitro fertilization, has been fighting a legal battle to regain custody of the children.

"The mom will not get visitation again," said Mikal Grass, an adoption lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "She's cooked."

Quets' only hope is that a Florida appeals court will overturn a trial court's order granting custody of the twins to Denise and Kevin Needham of Apex.

Quets appeared undeterred about how her current criminal charge may hurt her chances at regaining custody. On Monday morning, Mary Thompson, who with her husband hosted Quets on house arrest at their home over the weekend, told The Ottawa Citizen that Quets was in good spirits. She quoted Quets as saying, "I can't wait to be with my kids."

It is unclear when Quets may have her first court appearance in Raleigh. Prosecutors have said Quets should remain in custody here because they argue she is a flight risk and a threat to the community in which the children live.

On Dec. 22, federal investigators say, Quets picked up the children for her regular weekend visit, which she usually spent at her Durham apartment. But federal authorities say she took the twins to Canada instead of returning them to the Needhams on Christmas Eve. A week later, Quets was arrested in Ottawa and the twins were returned to the Needhams. Last week, she was placed under house arrest until her extradition to the United States. On Monday, Ottawa police drove Quets to the Thousand Islands Bridge in upstate New York, where she was handed off to FBI agents from Syracuse.

Quets' friends say it took two years for her to get pregnant with the twins, who were born July 6, 2005. Her friends and a sister say Quets had a difficult pregnancy in which she was unable to hold down food and only gained 10 pounds. They say Quets was sleep-deprived, malnourished and unable to think clearly when she agreed to let the Needhams adopt the twins on Aug. 16, 2005. They say she told the Needhams that she had changed her mind within a couple hours and filed paperwork revoking her consent a few days later.

Neither the Needhams nor their lawyers have talked about the adoption and subsequent legal dispute, citing the confidential nature of adoption cases. However, the Needhams' lawyers have said they dispute the account of the adoption being described by Quets' supporters, and they point out that the Florida judge granted custody to the Needhams.

Dueling adoption laws

In Florida, adoptions are handled differently based on the age of the child. If the child is 6 months of age or older, the birth mother has three days to revoke her consent to the adoption. If the child is younger than 6 months old -- as Quets' twins were -- the adoption is final as soon as the paperwork is signed. Under that scenario, "the consents are binding and irrevocable upon signature," said Grass, the Fort Lauderdale adoption lawyer. Quets' only recourse is to prove her consent was secured by fraud or duress, which it appears she did not prove to a Florida judge because custody was granted to the Needhams.

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