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This week, the Trump administration took the rare action of deploying a government aircraft to Cuba to bring back a 10-year-old child from Utah. The child has become the focal point of a heated custody battle intertwined with issues of gender identity.
At the heart of this complex situation is Rose Inessa-Ethington, a transgender woman accused of taking the child to Cuba without the biological mother’s consent. Concerns were raised by a family member who feared that Inessa-Ethington had traveled to Havana with the intention of arranging gender transition surgery for the child.
Inessa-Ethington, known for her influential Utah political blog during the 2010s, was apprehended in Cuba alongside her partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington. Both are now facing charges in the United States for international parental kidnapping.
The pair initially set off with the child and Blue’s 3-year-old for what they described as a camping trip in Canada in late March. However, communication ceased once they informed the child’s mother of their arrival in Canada. According to a federal court complaint filed in Utah, the couple subsequently traveled from Vancouver to Mexico and then onward to Cuba by April 1.
While the charges do not specifically confirm any plans for gender-affirming surgery, the feasibility of such a procedure in Cuba for minors remains legally questionable. The situation continues to unfold as legal proceedings advance, spotlighting the ongoing debate around parental rights and gender identity issues.
The FBI said that Blue Inessa-Ethington withdrew $10,000 from her checking account before leaving. Agents also found at their home a note with instructions from a mental health therapist in Washington, D.C., “to send the therapist the $10,000.00 and instructions on gender affirming medical care for children.” That note didn’t mention Cuba.
The use of the Department of Justice plane in a parental kidnapping investigation comes after the Trump administration sought to block access to gender-affirming care for minors and pressured health care providers over the issue.
Search began after child wasn’t returned as scheduled
The search for the child began on April 3 when they were not returned to the mother in Utah as scheduled, court documents show.
The 10-year-old’s mother, who was divorced from Rose Inessa-Ethington and had shared custody of the child, filed a missing-person report with police in Logan, Utah, a college and dairy farming town about 70 miles (115 kilometers) north of Salt Lake City.
Logan City Police Chief Jeff Simmons said his department’s initial focus was on the custodial interference allegations in the case, and he said investigators did not learn until later about concerns over gender-affirming surgery.
Logan police spokesperson Sgt. Brandon Bevan said those concerns were raised by one family member. He declined to say who.
“They just had the concern about it, no actual physical evidence” Bevan said.
A Utah state judge ordered the return of the 10-year-old to the child’s mother on April 13. Three days later, a federal magistrate judge issued an arrest warrant for the Inessa-Ethingtons. On the same day, Cuban law enforcement located the group. They were deported to the U.S. aboard the government plane Monday and arraigned in federal court in Richmond, Virginia.
The 10-year-old was returned to the child’s biological mother, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak in Utah indicated in a statement. Representatives of the FBI and U.S. attorneys office in Utah declined to say what happened to the 3-year-old child who had been with the group.
Parents engaged in custody dispute
The custody dispute between the parents does not appear to be a new development. An online fundraiser created five years go by Blue Inessa-Ethington titled “Help a Trans Mother Keep Custody of Her Child” raised $9,766.
“Last week, Rose’s ex relocated several counties away, negatively impacting Rose’s parent-time with the child,” she wrote on the fundraising page. She said the money would be used to seek 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 parenting her gender open child,” she wrote.
Family members said the child was assigned male at birth but identifies as a girl because of what they believed to be “manipulation” by Rose Inessa-Ethington, according to an April 16 affidavit from FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield.
Gender-affirming care for minors has been limited
The Trump administration moved in December to cut off gender-affirming care for minors, prompting a third of states to sue.
It was the latest in a series of clashes between an administration that says transgender health care can be harmful to children and advocates who say it’s medically necessary.
Gender-affirming surgery is rare among U.S. children, research shows. Guidance from several major medical organizations calls for caution around surgery for minors and says decisions about treatments are case-by-case. Fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents receive gender-affirming medications, such as hormones or puberty blockers.
In Cuba, gender-affirming surgeries are banned for minors and only performed for adults through the public health system under strict supervision in designated public hospitals for Cuban citizens. They must be authorized by a medical commission after a comprehensive review of the patient’s file. That process often takes years because it requires a wide range of medical and psychological evaluations.
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