2 Kidnaped Children Are Reunited With Parents : Crime: Police arrest two suspects and look for a third. They allegedly tried to extort money from aliens they smuggled across the border.

Two children allegedly kidnaped by alien smugglers in an extortion attempt were found unharmed Saturday morning at a Wilmington church and two suspects were taken into custody, authorities said.

Twenty-two hours after the abduction, Maria Gonzales burst into tears as she stepped from an elevator at Long Beach police headquarters into the arms of her 7-year-old daughter, Blanca, and 9-year-old son, Carlos.

“ Gracias. Muchas gracias, “ the 30-year-old woman called out to police again and again as she, her husband, Carlos, and the children held each other tightly.

For several minutes, soft, wordless sobs drifted from the knot of tangled arms and bodies as investigators, who had worked throughout the night to find the children, looked on.

“We are totally in your gratitude,” the mother, speaking in Spanish, later told police officers and detectives--some wet-eyed--as she moved to shake their hands.

The Gonzales’ ordeal began about 3 p.m. Friday during what was supposed to be the cheerful start of a new life in a new land for a family divided for several years by the border.

Carlos Gonzales, 29, a construction worker from San Bernardino who, police said, has been employed in California for several years and is obtaining legal status, contracted with alien smugglers, or “coyotes,” to bring his family here from Guanajuato, in central Mexico, for $1,000.

But when Gonzales picked them up Friday near Pacific Coast Highway and Long Beach Boulevard, a smuggler turned over his wife and their 2-year-old son but demanded an extra $1,000 for the other two children, police said. When Gonzales said he could not pay, the man fled with the youngsters.

The children, who told reporters Saturday that they were frightened of their captors but not mistreated, said they were first taken to a house. Then, about 9:30 p.m., they were dropped off at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington.

Pastor Rev. Luis Albuena said Albert Garcia, a church volunteer, was locking a door after an evening wedding rehearsal when “he saw a car coming with a young man inside, acting quite nervous.”

The man “dropped the children in front of the church and told him, ‘Take care of the children,’ and zoomed off. He didn’t give us any time to get the license (number) or anything.”

Blanca was plucky and talkative, carrying the entire conversation for her hearing-impaired brother, the priest said.

“Immediately,” Albuena said, “I connected them as coyote children because this is not the first time we have had a coyote case.”

While Long Beach detectives searched all night for the children, the two were fast asleep in Garcia’s Wilmington home, after enjoying cookies and a soda in the rectory of the parish, which serves a large Latino population in the Harbor area.

Albuena said he heard of the hunt for the two children on the news Saturday morning and called police.

The children were examined at a Long Beach hospital and found to be unharmed, then taken to police headquarters where they drew pictures and, for the first time, rode an elevator, played with an office copying machine and peered into a TV news crew’s video camera as they awaited their parents.

On Friday evening, Gonzales provided police a phone number for the coyotes, which detectives traced to a small, ramshackle house at the rear of another home on Lime Avenue, a few blocks from the kidnaping scene.

There the officers found eight other adults, allegedly being held hostage for ransom by the smugglers, police said. Police arrested two men at the house, Jose Guzman, 23, and Carlos Valencia, 22, on suspicion of kidnaping and recovered a shotgun used to guard the victims.

Police said they were seeking the chief kidnaping suspect, Lewis Gerardo Miramontes, 24, last seen driving a black Mercury Cougar.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is expected to join in the investigation of the smuggling ring, officials said.

As for the Gonzales family and the other victims, the INS’ acting director in Los Angeles, Robert M. Moschorak, said:

“We would have to interview these people, both the victims and the smugglers, and determine their legal status in the United States.”

If they have relatives in this country, he said, they may be entitled to apply for citizenship.

Long Beach Police Detective William Collette said he did not expect the INS to deport anyone because they will be needed as witnesses in the kidnaping case.