October 1, 2026
LOGAN, Utah (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration took the unusual step this week of sending a government plane to Cuba to return a 10-year-old from Utah who is at the center of a complicated and contentious custody fight involving the child’s gender identity.
The child's father, Rose Inessa-Ethington, a biological male who identifies as a woman, is accused of taking the child to Cuba without the permission of the biological mother. Federal and state authorities sought the return of the child after a family member expressed concern that Inessa-Ethington went to Havana to get the child so-called gender transition surgery.
Inessa-Ethington, who had run a popular Utah political blog in the 2010s, was arrested along with his partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, and charged in the U.S. with international parental kidnapping.
The couple traveled with the child to Canada ostensibly for a camping trip in late March with Blue’s 3-year-old child. However, the two adults turned off their phones after telling the older child’s mother 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 federal court in Utah.
The charges don't say if the couple actually planned on getting the child the surgery in Cuba or how they would get it, because gender transition surgery isn't legal for children in Cuba.
The FBI said that Blue Inessa-Ethington withdrew $10,000 from his 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 has worked to block access to so-called gender transition treatments for minors and pressured health care providers over the issue.
The Associated Press left telephone and email messages with the court-appointed attorneys who represented Blue and Rose Inessa-Ethington in Virginia. The defendants will be returned to Utah to face one count each of international parental kidnapping, according to court filings.
The search for the child began on April 3 when he was 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 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 the gender-transition surgery.
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 on Monday and arraigned in federal court in Richmond, Virginia.
The 10-year-old was returned to his biological mother, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak in Utah indicated in a statement. Representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah declined to say what happened to the 3-year-old child who had been with the group.
Family members said the child was born male 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.
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