ELDORADO, Texas — Lawyers for the Fundamentalist LDS Church are planning to challenge the decisions that placed 416 children from the YFZ Ranch in state protective custody.

"We're going to contest those decisions in every possible way," Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney who is acting as a spokesman for the FLDS Church, said Sunday.

"It's a matter of getting their children back. For those parents and the children, too, it's their highest priority. They're going to do everything they can to get them back."

Texas authorities will begin collecting DNA samples of the children being sheltered at the San Angelo Coliseum today, in an effort to determine parentage. Child protective services workers have said they are encountering difficulty in determining who are some children's parents.

"It will take several days to collect all the samples," the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said in a statement on its Web site. "Once the samples are collected, (DFPS) will begin placing children in foster care."

Some FLDS mothers with nursing babies and toddlers may be unaware that they will be forced to leave their children behind once Texas officials gather the DNA samples from them.

"I don't know how many mothers have babies, but I would say there are dozens of mothers who are nursing little ones," said Monica Jessop, whose five children between the ages of 3 and 11 are in state custody. "I'm sure they don't know they will be separated."

Jessop said she and a group of other mothers tried on Sunday to visit their children housed at the San Angelo Coliseum and were turned away by law enforcement.

"They told us if we went on that property again we would be arrested," she said.

FLDS members said Texas authorities rejected their offers of personal clothing for the women and children staying at the coliseum and nearby Wells Fargo Pavilion.

An FLDS man said he tried to deliver a U-Haul full of the personal items nearly two weeks ago. "They returned everything," he told the Deseret News.

The FLDS people dress in conservative clothing and wear religious undergarments they make themselves.

The parents are expected to show up at the Schleicher County Courthouse square on Tuesday to give a DNA sample.

Jessop said the entire FLDS community is trying to do whatever it takes to get children returned to their families.