Logan, Utah– President Donald Trump’s administration took the unusual step this week of sending a government plane to Cuba To return a 10-year-old boy from Utah who is at the center of a complex and contentious custody battle related to the child’s gender identity.
The child’s mother, Rose Inessa Ethington, a transgender woman, is accused of taking the child to Cuba without the permission of the biological mother. Federal and state authorities sought the baby’s return after a family member expressed concern that Inessa Ethington had gone to Havana to have sex-reassignment surgery.
Inessa Ethington, who ran a popular political blog in Utah in the 2000s, along with her partner Blue Inessa Ethington, have been arrested and charged with international parental kidnapping in the United States.
The couple traveled with the child to Canada ostensibly for a camping trip in late March with 3-year-old Blue. However, the two adults turned off their phones after telling the eldest child’s mother that they had arrived in Canada. They flew from Vancouver to Mexico and then to Cuba on April 1, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in a federal court in Utah.
The charges do not clarify whether the couple actually planned to have gender confirmation surgery in Cuba or how they would obtain it since such surgery is illegal for children in Cuba.
The FBI said Blue Inesa-Ethington withdrew $10,000 from her checking account before leaving. Agents also found in their home a note containing instructions from a mental health therapist in Washington, D.C., to “send the therapist $10,000.00 and instructions for the affirmative medical care of the children.” That memo did not mention Cuba.
The use of the Justice Department plane to investigate the parental kidnapping case comes after the Trump administration sought to do so Preventing access to gender-affirming care for minors and Pressure on health care providers On this issue.
The Associated Press left phone messages and emails with court-appointed attorneys representing Blue and Rose Inessa Ethington in Virginia. The defendants will be returned to Utah to face one count of international parental kidnapping, according to court filings.
Court documents show that the search for the child began on April 3 when he was not returned to his mother in Utah as planned.
The 10-year-old’s mother, who is divorced from Rose Inessa Ethington and shared custody of the child, filed a missing person’s report with police in Logan, Utah, a college town and dairy farm located about 70 miles (115 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City.
Logan City Police Chief Jeff Simmons said his department’s initial focus was on allegations of custodial interference in the case, and he said investigators did not learn until later about concerns about gender confirmation surgery.
Logan police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Bevan said a family member raised those concerns. He refused to say by whom.
“They were concerned about this, and there was no actual physical evidence,” Bevan said.
A Utah judge ordered the 10-year-old returned to the child’s mother on April 13. Three days later, a federal judge issued an arrest warrant for Inessa Ethington’s family. On the same day, Cuban law enforcement authorities located the group. They were extradited to the United States on the government plane on Monday and were arraigned in federal court in Richmond, Virginia.
The First Assistant US Attorney in Utah, Melissa Holyoak, indicated in a statement that the 10-year-old boy had been returned to his biological mother. Representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Utah declined to say what happened to the 3-year-old who was with the group.
The custody dispute between the parents does not appear to be a new development. An online fundraiser created five years ago by Blue Inesa-Ethington called “Helping a Trans Mother with Nursery for Her Child” has raised $9,766.
“Last week, Rose’s ex moved several districts away, negatively impacting the parents’ time with the child,” she wrote on the fundraising page. She said the money would be used to obtain a court order that would keep the child “safe and stable throughout this process.”
Anyone who has spent time with Rose knows “how much care and thought she puts into raising her sexually extroverted child,” she wrote.
Family members said the child was a boy at birth, but was identified as a girl because of what they believe was “manipulation” by Rose Inessa Ethington, according to an April 16 affidavit from FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield.
The Trump administration moved in December to cut off supplies Gender-affirming care for minors, This prompted a third of the states to file a lawsuit.
It was the latest in a A series of clashes Between the administration that says transgender health care could be harmful to children and advocates who say it’s medically necessary.
Gender confirmation surgery Rare among US childrenResearch shows. Guidelines from several major medical organizations call for caution about performing surgeries on minors and say decisions about treatment are made on a case-by-case basis. Less than 1 in 1,000 American teens Receiving gender-affirming medications, such as hormones or puberty blockers.
In Cuba, gender-affirming surgeries are prohibited for minors and are only performed on adults through the public health system under strict supervision in public hospitals designated for Cuban citizens. It must be approved by a medical committee after a comprehensive review of the patient’s file. This process often takes years because it requires a wide range of medical and psychological evaluations.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana, and Boone from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press journalists Eric Tucker in Washington, Christiana Mesquita in Havana and Devi Shastri in Milwaukee contributed to this report.