Harris County deputies making a welfare check earlier this month at the family's home in Cypress found the children ranging in age from 1 to 9 being cared for by their 15-year-old sister. She also was taking care of a neighbor's 3-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl.
Shanell Monique Mosley, 33, has been charged with child endangerment and child abandonment.
CPS said Mosley had told her 15-year-old daughter that she would be gone a month. CPS said the 15-year-old told them they were left with no food or diapers for the baby. The youngest child, a 1-year-old, was showing signs of malnutrition when emergency workers arrived.
An aunt of the children stayed overnight one night, but no relatives thought to care for the children full time, the Houston Chronicle said court documents showed.
Mosley told CPS investigator Loree Childers on Friday in a short telephone call that she thought she had left her children in the care of relatives and that she didn't intend to abandon them. Some relatives said Mosley was expected back in the United States this weekend.
Childers told the court Wednesday that Mosley said the soonest she could leave Nigeria would be Jan. 23.
State District Judge Michael Schneider asked CPS workers to conduct a home study and background check on James Ellis Raiford, the father of Mosley's youngest child. Raiford told the court that he wanted to visit his son and take him back to his home in Baton Rouge, La.
The newspaper reported that CPS had been called to the Mosley home four times since 2006 to investigate possible abuse and neglect.
Most of the calls had to do with child-parent disagreements, CPS spokswoman Estella Olguin said. Caseworkers had dismissed the allegations because of no evidence of abuse.
