By Joshua Krause
Last month, a Michigan family decided it would be fun to go camping for the summer, on a 10-acre plot of land they had recently purchased. Christopher and Antonia Hernandez wanted their six children to experience the outdoors, and get a taste for off-grid living. But after living in several large tents for 9 days, their rural experiment came to an abrupt end.
On May 19, the parents left the property to do laundry at a laundromat, as well as to buy food and some fencing for the animals. The younger children were left in the care of their 15-year-old son, who is nearly 16.
“When we arrived back, the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department was at the property claiming to have received a report of squatters on the land,” Antonia said. “We provided documentation of our right to be on the land, which was verified the next day by the land owner.”
A CPS representative also was on the property, and had concerns about the living conditions. CPS made four allegations, according to the official court document:
- The family was not in a “stable living environment.”
- The family had no electricity or water source, and was using kerosene as a means of heat.
- The children were playing in the woods, cared for by a 15 year old.
- The youngest child had a diaper rash.
- The 17-year-old girl, who has Cerebral Palsy, was cold.
The children, whose ages ranged from 7 months to 17 years, were promptly taken away from the parents by CPS and the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department. However, many of the reasons given for the seizure of these children don’t hold up. For one, the kids appear to have had everything they need. Their lifestyle was by no means “easy” according the standards of someone living on the grid, but they were in good hands.
The family had a generator, and had purchased a pass to use the showers at a nearby state park. The multiple tents they were using were very large, and were sufficient to house the family and their belongings. They were also receiving an abundant supply of drinking water by filling 5-gallon jugs at Walmart, and collecting rainwater.
The claim that some of the children were “cold” also doesn’t hold up. The oldest girl with Cerebral Palsy, had a temperature of 96 degrees after the government officials left her tent flap open for an hour and a half. Her temperature quickly stabilized as soon as she was admitted to the hospital, where doctors claimed she was “very well taken care of.”
The “diaper rash” accusation is equally absurd. Apparently these CPS workers have never had children of their own. If they did, they would know that the vast majority of parents have experienced this problem with their infants, and it is not necessarily a sign of neglect. In any case, the rash had already been healing when CPS arrived.
And since when is a teenager too young to look after his/her siblings? I guarantee you there are millions of single parents out there that have had to leave their kids home alone to take care of each other. If the adolescent is a responsible person (which this one probably is after taking care of an older, disabled sibling) then the other children are probably in good hands.
Unfortunately, none of this was taken into consideration by the authorities. The parents were given no choice but to leave the property and hand over their children to CPS. They weren’t even given the option to return to their original residence (which was an ordinary grid-connected home). Fortunately for these parents, their children were returned to them on June 10th, after 21 days. However, the kids were not returned on the grounds that CPS had made mistake, or overreacted.
The only reason the Hernandez family has been reunited, is due to the Tlingit ancestry of the mother. Federal and Michigan state laws create an additional barrier for separating Native American families. If not for her ancestry, the kids would probably still be in the hands of CPS.
Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple, where this article first appeared. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger.
Looks like the Hernandez family has a lawsuit….CPS has no jurisdiction, not to mention lacking reasons to separate children from family.
You cannot sue the government. It has unlimited resources, which includes the ability to use other agencies like Adult Protective Services and the police to destroy your life. I know people who lost their family home in legal fees fighting one bogus case after another.
Depends on state, county, agency……. in California counties hold CPS jurisdiction and are liable to suit.
I don’t know about California, but in NY State they say you can sue, too, but just try. Like I said, I know people arrest ed on bogus charges or they went after other family members. The stuff I’ve seen is incredible,
Finding a qualified attorney to represent may be even more difficult due to conflict of interest in the good ole boy network.
People need to mind their own business. If no one is getting molested or in imminent danger, what is the big deal? Being thy brother’s keeper does not give you the right to spy on your neighbors and report them if you disagree with their lifestyle. What has the USA become – the USSR?
don’t you know what the usa has become?
when the government yanks at your chain, you’ll get it.
Its not about sensibility, accountability or compassion. Our government is about control and agendas…and everyone is expected to comply. We are slaves until we are not. Is it really that hard to see? Do you think you hold a special status because this did not happen to you?
You are a slave to this government and the mega-corporations. They tell us what to do, how to do it and when to do it. They have a rule or law for many things that a simpleton would see as unnatural. When you accept your status, then you will be in the mindset to change things. Until then, you live in a dream.
Dear Getaclue: I have rarely seen it put better than this. I know this stuff, but the way you wrote it here really smacked me on the head. Your question “Do you think you hold a special status because this did not happen to you?” made my jaw drop. Thanks for expressing it all so well.
Getaclue, I absolutely see what this country is turning into, or more accurately has already become, and what you say is right on. You obviously misunderstood the intent of my words. I resent the fact that neighbors are willy nilly reporting their neighbors to police without first engaging with them in conversation. This kind of thing (Big Brother and turning your neighbors into the police) happens when people are disconnected from and fearful of one another (due to weapons of mass distraction) and do not engage with their neighbors on an ongoing basis. Our media are goading the population on a constant basis to live in fear of one another and to cast judgement without first or even ever engaging. One final note, since you know nothing about me or my circumstances or how I live my life, you are out of line in attacking me personally – “Do you think you hold a special status because this did not happen to you?” No, I do not hold a special status. The fact is, nobody does.
No Nazi Germany
You learned the USSR was a police state from reading what? Oh, yes, textbooks owned by big US corporations as well as the media owned by the 1%. I’m not criticizing you, because growing up in this country, I know we are not taught anything. However, did you know that the Russian Revolution was the first successful Workers’ revolution? That you would not have had the 40 hour work week, social security, unemployment insurance, the abolition of child labor, free education, the right for women to vote if the revolution had not been successful? Trust me the 1% didn’t just woke up one morning and said it’s immoral that we are working American workers 12-16 hours a day from the age of 6 without any benefits. In fact, although the Soviet Union was corrupted by American corporations by the time it fell in 1991, think about it we didn’t have a police state and the economy didn’t tank til the Soviet Union completely fell. This is not a coincidence just like it was not a coincidence women got the right to vote in the USSR in 1917 and then we got it in 1920.
YOU live in a sad, sad dream world….to equate the (Jewish) Bolsheviks’ eradication of MILLIONS of Russian Orthodox Christian middle class, kulaks and peasants to some sort of ‘human rights’ experiment that was ‘successful’ (?!!) is just fucking laughable. WHERE did you get the idea that the USSR was a resounding success as a ‘workers’ paradise’??!
I suppose Jessica Coco also believes that Stalin was kindly Uncle Joe. Western media in the 1920s and 1930s did much to hide his deliberate starvation of millions upon millions of peasants while he sold and shipped grain overseas. Stalin was the most prolific mass murderer known to humankind.
Jessica Coco ought to read about the Americans who, during the depression, and believing the propaganda from the USSR, relocated to that country to fill jobs promised to them by, among others, Ford Motor Company.
Jessica Coco should find out what happened to all of those well-meaning and believing Americans. I suggest she read “The Forsaken, An American Tragedy In Stalin’s Russia” by Tim Tzouliadis. Yes, these people were forsaken by the U.S. and almost all eventually died in work camps provided for them and millions of other innocents under the tyranny of good ole, and completely mad, Uncle Joe.
“You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia
were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by
ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians
without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism
committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most
of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof
that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.” -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Makes you wonder.
everything is sensationalized. its always more more more. if you are a vacuum cleaner salesman you try to sell as many as possible. if you are a cop you try to write as many tickets as possible. if you are a CPS worker you try to steal as many children as possible. I doubt they look much beyond that.
If they owned the property, why did they have to have it ” verified the next day by the land owner.” ?
My thoughts exactly. Either something is fishy about this whole thing or the journalist who wrote this has not included some key information.
I noticed that, also. Maybe what happened is that the seller of the property verified that it had been sold to the campers. After all, who takes important legal documents such as deeds and mortgage contracts camping with them? Because of that statement in the article, I did a brief search on this case, but I only came up with this identical story at various alternative media websites. As I said, I only performed a brief search.
If this all occurred as written here with no facts left out, it is a horrendous injustice. One more of so very many.
What are you talking about? This is Merica’ and therefore good. If you criticize anything about America, you are being unpatriotic. Of course, if this happened in Russia we would say that it is typical for Russia to be a horrible country. But this is America, so just go back to your netflicks and try not to think about anything serious.
Camping is now illegal, heck they kill you for it in New Mexico.
I suspect that we have large numbers of children in homeless camps. I find it an outrage that towns will order homeless camps destroyed but will not actually house and care for the homeless. Mental patients as well as addicts and alcoholics constitute the vast majority of homeless but these folks do have children. I have also seen very elderly homeless who are hungry and without basic medical care and I’m not so certain that state nursing homes are better than sleeping in the bushes and hedges near towns.
Wow, Americans have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage and now they’re choking on it!
abolish the demonic CPS. they are the worst, dumbest sacks of crap. ti is 100% UnConstitutional.
i will move out of this country with my kids if this gets much worse. this is pathetic.
damn them. lot of stupid family-hating lesbians in the cps.
and the stupid sheriff’s dept is just as guilty. when are lawmen going to STAND UP
against tyranny. CPS is DEMONIC TYRANNY.
these kids were taken, KIDNAPPED for 21 days.
this is evil.
+Another ‘phone call to the police’…who act without any legal status to displace citizens from where ever they may be ….on only a phone call…yet NOTHING is ever done to them or the phone caller…only to the FAMILY and the CHILDREN….DOMESTIC TERRORISM BY LAW ENFORCEMENT….imho
Its unbelievable that this evil is happening every day in every state in the union! I see children abused, tortured, starved, but never touched by child services. But if you are a good parent and loving and taking care of your children, cps comes in like swooping buzzards and steals them away…..for the good of the child, of course. But cps does not consider the scars and terror that they have just inflicted on that child they are stealing!!! This needs to stop! Our government is out of control in so many countless areas! Shall we fire them all and start over with people who have common sense and love truth and justice and america?
CPS trying to kidnap gets shot!
I went to Girl Scout Camp the whole Summer, I was not Taken by CPS
I think its a form of “testing the waters” in regards to how we will be handled by those in authority. Obviously the kids were never in danger, and if you keep up with the news, this is starting to become more frequent. If we can’t even stand up for our kids against kidnappers, then hell, freedom is a joke.
Few realize that even when you purchase and pay-off your land … you will never actually own the property.
We The People are no longer ‘Kings and Queens of our Castle’.
If you are not already enraged … wait till you read this …
– US citizens were declared ‘enemies-of-the-corporate-state’ by FDR, by ex.order #2040, and ratified into law by the corrupt Congress March, 9 1933, 48 Statue.
Here’s the very real and ugly truth: ALL public and private land and properties, natural resources, infrastructure, national assets holdings including ‘We The People’, have been hypothecated, collateralized and monetized as surety or collateralized corporate-debt-slaves and property to the London City Rothschild banking Empire since The Act of 1871, and are held by the Depository Trust Corporation as surety, when our nation was ‘incorporated’ after national bankruptcy and receivership to the Rothschild Banking Empire.
– The office of Military Settlement at the United Nations Incorporated holds all National Seals for the bankrupt United States.
– All property was hypothecated by The Federal Reserve Act of 1913. (Hypothecate, means to pledge as security without delivery of procession.)
– Volume 20: Corpus Juris Secumdum 1785: ‘The United States Is a foreign corporation with respect to a state’.
– The United States Is A Corporation: Us Statue Code Title 28, 3002 (15) (a) (b) (c) 16 Stat. 419, Chap. 62, 41st Congress 3rd session.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INCORPORATED aka USA Inc.
– All titles are ‘Fee Simple’ meaning you are a mere ‘tenant on the land’ since The Emergency Banking Relief Act 1933.
– Joint H.R. 192, 1933, – There is no ‘buying’ or ‘selling’, only the transfer of liability.
When you falsely assume to be ‘buying’ a property, it is only the transfer of liability on the title. It has nothing to do with the ‘procession’ of the property. You are just purchasing a ‘lien position’ on the title.
What does all this have to do with this issue?
Maybe this will clarify it?
– The term “citizen” in the United States, is analogous to the term “subject” in common law. State vs. Manual 20 NC 122, 14 C.J.S 4, pg. 430.
In other words ‘We The People’ are incorporated debt-slaves or mere ‘subjects’ with no Constitutional Rights only ‘granted privileges’ that can be revoked at any time by the corporate policy enforcers (law enforcement) who serve NOT the American people but the occupational de facto fraudulent USA Inc.
By this evil, corrupt invasive de facto fraudulent banking/military mercenary criminal cartel, you are ‘presumed’ to be a ‘subject’ or ‘US citizen’, owned by their corporate slave-masters with NO rights.
Now that you know this, you have a choice:
You can remain a helpless victim or ‘us citizen’ status, or you can now start your educational process by learning who and what you ‘actually’ are and empower yourself against this tyrannical and evil system of enslavement.
Research: ‘America Is A Corporation’ and what ‘US citizen’, actually means in-law. I promise that you will NEVER refer to yourself as a ‘US Citizen’, again until you are ready to beat the corrupt system from within !
Begin the process of breaking the chains that bind you. Learn what they never want you to know.
It’s Obama’s fault. Welcome to communist U.S.A.
This began way before Obama. He is just perpetuating policies that preceded him.
I have not heard of this until Obama came into office and i never heard of it when the Bush’s was in office. It’s still Obama’s fault and his Muslim way’s . When i was a kid, my brother and i use to walk 5 miles or more by ourselves and no one bothered us. I believe there was also perverts back then too, but as i said, no one bothered us.
Wait until FEMA starts rounding up people and putting them in camps. It’s coming and they have already had trial runs on this. FACT !
They probably bought the ten acres on a land contract and are making payments ! People call there selves home owners, but until you hold the title to the house you are nothing more than a renter to the bank !
And for the first time in American history, someone actually DIDN’T get f*cked for being a native American.
So camping is a crime now. Land of the free. Free for clueless CPS douches to steal your children on the slightest pretext. Horrifying.