By Ian Max Stevenson, The Idaho Statesman

About 140 people stood on the sidewalk outside the St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center on Avenue B on Saturday afternoon to protest police officers taking a 10-month-old boy from his mother.

The child is the grandson of a Boise pastor and campaign consultant of Ammon Bundy’s, an independent candidate for Idaho governor and right-wing activist who was arrested Saturday morning while seeking the boy’s release.

The protest was organized after Garden City Police, Meridian Police and Boise Police stopped a family at a Garden City gas station late Friday night and took into custody a 10-month-old baby who authorities believed to be in danger of imminent harm, according to a news release from the Meridian Police Department.

Protesters stood on the sidewalk with signs saying “medical kidnapping is not okay!” and “parental rights” with a slash through the words, while others wrote similar messages in chalk on an adjacent bike path.

Missed pediatric appointment leads to police action

In a Saturday interview with the Idaho Statesman, the baby’s aunt, Miranda Chavoya, said the pediatrician the boy was seeing recommended he go to the emergency room because he was having trouble digesting proteins and was losing weight.

In the Saturday morning news release, Meridian Police said the baby was hospitalized March 1 after “suffering from severe malnourishment.” He was discharged from the hospital March 4, after gaining some weight.

The boy has had multiple follow-up appointments with a pediatrician, Chavoya said.

On Friday, the boy’s mother, Marissa Anderson, 21, was not feeling well and left a voicemail with the pediatrician to cancel her appointment, Anderson told the Statesman in an interview.

When Friday’s appointment was canceled, “the Meridian Police were contacted and advised this child’s condition could lead to severe injury or even death if not treated,” the release said.

Anderson’s father is Diego Rodriguez, the consultant with Bundy’s campaign. In a blog post published Saturday, Rodriguez wrote that a social worker with the state’s child welfare system contacted Anderson by text message. Authorities later came to the family’s address, but Anderson and the baby’s father were not at home, Chavoya said.

Later, the baby’s father called the social worker to explain that the couple had canceled the appointment and would reschedule, Chavoya said.

The police department’s release said that the Department of Health and Welfare contacted the child’s father, who agreed to bring the child in for examination but then “failed to show up.”

Officers attempted to contact the parents and examine the child at a residence in Meridian, but “the occupants were uncooperative and refused to let officers check on the child’s welfare,” the release said. After receiving a warrant to enter the child’s home, police “discovered the parents and the child had left, before officers could check on the child,” the release said.

On Friday night, Anderson, her sister, her father and other members of the family saw Garden City police officers outside the home of a friend’s house where they were having dinner, Chavoya said. Returning home from dinner, police stopped the group at a gas station in Garden City.

Chavoya said about eight police vehicles were on the scene, and that police told the family the pediatrician reported the incident to the state because the baby was believed to be “dangerously underweight.”

The boy’s father attempted to explain why the appointment was missed, but police eventually asked him to step out of the vehicle and told him he would be arrested for felony injury to a child, Chavoya said.

Chavoya was also asked to leave the vehicle, she said. Police initially confused her with the child’s mother and said they would charge her with felony injury to a child, she said. Police realized their mistake, she said, but arrested her instead on suspicion of resisting or obstructing officers and booked her into the Ada County Jail.

Anderson told the Statesman that a police officer promised her she could ride with her baby in the ambulance. Once she was inside the ambulance, a livestream of the incident that Anderson posted on Facebook showed a police officer telling Anderson to relinquish custody of her child or face arrest. She asked the officer why she couldn’t accompany the boy to the hospital.

“Once I went in the ambulance, they took him away from me,” she said.

Anderson, who repeatedly told police she would not hand over her child, was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor resisting or obstructing officers and taken to jail. The boy’s father was briefly detained but was not taken to jail, Chavoya said.

A police officer could be heard on the livestream telling Anderson she’ll have a shelter care hearing related to her son’s case on Tuesday.

After the baby was taken to the St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center, the family saw an ambulance leave and go to the hospital in Boise, where the family believes the boy is being treated.

However, Chavoya said her family has been told by hospital staff that a baby with her nephew’s name is not being held in the hospital system.

“They’re currently telling us that the baby is not there,” Chavoya said. “There’s no baby by that last name here.”

A spokesperson for St. Luke’s said in an email that she did not have details about the incident.

A spokesperson for Health and Welfare, Niki Forbing-Orr, said in a text message that “all child welfare cases are confidential.”

Speaking generally, she said, “only law enforcement can declare a child to be in imminent danger. They might do that in consultation with a social worker or medical professional. (Law enforcement) then places the child in the custody of the state.”

She added that the Child Welfare Program within the Division of Family and Community Services handles such cases.

Ammon Bundy involvement

In an interview with the Statesman at Saturday’s protest, Bundy said he heard about the events late Friday night on a cellphone video call. Rodriguez, the baby’s grandfather, is a friend of Bundy’s who introduced the independent candidate for governor at his announcement rally last summer.

On Saturday, Bundy posted a video about the incident on YouTube and shared information about the protest on social media.

While police had surrounded the Chavoya family at the Garden City gas station, Bundy left his home in Emmett and headed toward the scene, he said. He also “initiated” that messages should be sent out to followers of the People’s Rights, a far-right activist group, to come to the gas station and to “start calling the Meridian Police Department.”

Bundy said he suspected the baby would be taken to St. Luke’s in Meridian, where he headed. Others who were at the gas station followed the ambulance to the hospital, he said, and he arrived a short time later.

A couple dozen Bundy followers were at the hospital, Bundy said, and he and others approached the hospital entrance and began asking questions of police officers stationed out front and “demand(ing) that they return the baby.”

After declining to leave the scene, Bundy was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, while his gubernatorial campaign manager was arrested on one count of misdemeanor resisting or obstructing officers.

“How much sense does this make?” Bundy told the Statesman. “The baby is breastfeeding. He is having a hard time with proteins. … They take the baby away from the nutrition source, the mother, when the mother’s begging them to take her with them.”

Bundy is scheduled to stand trial for misdemeanor trespassing charges on Monday.

He has been arrested several times since 2020, and was found guilty in July of misdemeanor trespassing at the Idaho Capitol.

“Every time I’ve been arrested,” he said Saturday, “I’ve been in the defense of somebody’s rights.”