Idaho Social Worker Removes Baby From Conservative Parents After Expressing Racial Preference For ‘People of Color’

A social worker in Idaho named Nice Loufoua made the decision to pull the proverbial trigger and have a 10-month-old child removed from his parents. There are various different accounts of what led up to this and outrage among local political activists is growing. This is in part due to the fact that the child is the grandson of a prominent pastor in the capital city of Boise. The family has a lot of political connections as well.

Reports from local mainstream media outlets detail the events that led up to the child being removed from his parents largely based on the police report from the police department in the city of Meridian, a suburb of Boise and the second-largest city in the state of Idaho.

Although we wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the police department is lying, a journalist’s job is to research both sides of a story provide a detailed and impartial view of what they believe happened.

One of the main reports being cited is from the left-leaning Idaho Statesman, an arm of the once bankrupt conglomerate news organization, McClatchy. Ian Max Stevenson details the situation by giving Independent gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy the headline.

After briefly describing what happened with the 10-month-old and his parents based largely on the police report, they finish up the story by going back to talking about Ammon Bundy some more, reminding their readers of everything newsworthy about Ammon Bundy.

Meanwhile, the grandfather of the child wrote an op-ed on an independent website, detailing the family’s side of the story.

Although it’s fair to assume the family is going to be biased, it doesn’t mean that the details of the op-ed are wrong, or shouldn’t be reported on as well, as “in the words of the family” if nothing else. Idaho Statesman, however, does not oblige the general public the opportunity to get this perspective.

Many Facebook comments on the post from the Idaho Statesman are from confused readers who were apparently misled into thinking that the child’s parents were somehow intentionally withholding food or nutrition from the child.

While the Idaho Statesman didn’t actually say that, they failed to describe the situation well enough, which led their readers to draw false conclusions.

What appears to have actually happened in regards to the health of the child, is that he wasn’t able to process what he was being fed because of a health problem that led to his throwing up and not being able to gain weight to some degree.

That in no way implies that the parents weren’t feeding him.

In the op-ed, however, if you give the family some benefit of the doubt, they explain in much more detail what really happened with the child’s health, and who the parents are.

Based on my research, the parents do not look like dead beats. They are young and struggling with a child that is having some health issues, something that would scare and challenge any new parent.

It was reported that the parents missed a weigh-in appointment with a doctor they were seeing in the city of Meridian because the Mother wasn’t feeling well that day.

Missing a weigh-in can be a big deal when you have a child who is having health issues when it comes to the law. However, the mainstream reports state that the father was given a second chance to take the child in without any ramifications.

But what was only reported in the op-ed is that the father was directed to an entirely different facility called “Faces of Hope Victim Center”. This may have led the father to wonder if he was taking his child to be apprehended by Idaho Health and Welfare, rather than taking his child to a doctor’s appointment.

From the op-ed, in italics: To claim that “medical personel [sic] determined the child was suffering from severe malnourishment” is an outright lie, and is obviously designed to make it look as if Levi and Marissa were not taking care of Cyrus.

Meridian Police said Health and Welfare was able to contact the child’s father, who agreed to bring the child in for an examination, but then failed to show up. This is also a gross mischaracterization of the facts. Levi did contact Nice Loufoua, the social worker who had texted Marissa, and asked her what was going on? She refused to give any answers to him. He asked what they thought was wrong with Baby Cyrus since they were given a clean bill of health and discharged from the hospital. Nice refused to give Levi, Cyrus’s father, any information and just demanded that he go immediately to a clinic because it is a “medical emergency.” But she refused to tell him what the “medical emergency” was. She then texted him the address for “Faces of Hope Victim Center.”

Would you take your child to a place called the Faces of Hope Victim Center after being verbally harassed by a social worker? Upon looking up this place, you can see that this is a victim center for child abuse. Levi and Marissa wisely recognized this as a setup.

I am drawing some degree of speculation here. However, that same day the doctor at Functional Medicine in Idaho, Aaron Dykstra, allegedly reported the family to Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Nice Loufoua. Loufoua would have likely been the one to make a judgment call to have police take custody of the child. What’s concerning to me is that there are no obvious signs that these parents were abusive or breaking the law or being reckless, although I am not a legal expert. It is well understood that sometimes doctors have legal obligations if they are concerned about a child’s health.

However, in my opinion, often these decisions made by doctors and social workers are judgment calls.

As outsiders in this story, we don’t have every single detail. But with Idaho being almost 80% white, it’s worth the question: Why was a refugee from Congo, who has gone on record stating she has in-group racial preferences, given the power to decide if this family, who Nice admittedly doesn’t identify with as much as someone who looks like her, should be able to keep custody of their child based on one missed appointment?

In one video previously posted to YouTube and later made private, Loufoua describes how the college she went to had very few black people. Loufoua explained that she wanted to be one of the few on campus so that other black people could see her there and feel more comfortable attending.

That may seem harmless, but she went on to much more thoroughly describe her racial in-group preference.

If a white person were to do the same thing in a majority non-white U.S. city or state, they’d likely be labeled as “racist” and kicked out of school or fired from their job.

So this double standard, in our view, calls in to question the credibility of Loufoua to make an unbiased judgment call towards an apparently white Christian family living in a majority white state, that Loufoua admittedly feels uncomfortable in because there are, in her words, not many black people like her in Idaho.

What ultimately comes of this could be determined in a few days, weeks, or months based on how the court system handles things. In the meanwhile, the parents, Marissa and Levi Anderson will have to live in limbo while their baby Cyrus is temporarily a ward of the state. Lt. Gov. and candidate for Governor Janice McGeachin also opined on Facebook saying:

“I am very concerned by the reports regarding Baby Cyrus being taken away from his parents. This morning, I reached out to the Governor and his chief of staff requesting a phone call regarding this situation. Taking a child from his parents must always be a very last resort. This kind of thing must not happen in Idaho. I will continue to investigate this situation.”

You can read the “mainstream” Idaho Statesman story here, and the op-ed by Cyrus’ grandfather here, and draw your own well-informed conclusion outside of our opinions if you so choose.

[Editor’s note: Freedom Man PAC, the site hosting the op-ed, has been accused of doxxing Loufoua by local media. Doxxing, in a legal sense, typically involves releasing private information to the public that was not previously available, and Valiant News was unable to independently verify these actions were taken by Freedom Man PAC. As a result, we will continue to link to that website to allow our readers to see the op-ed written by Cyrus’ grandfather.]

A now-private video previously showed the reported social worker talking about her racial preferences in a video where she spoke about her experiences in college. It appears to have been part of an interview in which she described her refugee status. That article is still available at time of publication.

This is an excerpt from the now-private video: “I visited the campus and I saw a student of color, a black girl that was walking around campus, and I was like, there’s one! Because we do live in Idaho and you don’t see that often. So if I could be that black girl or that black person for someone else, it could be why they decide to go here. It could be what gives them a sense of belonging. Living in Idaho in general or in the northwest, there’s not a large population of people of color, so you’re always looking for people that look like you… …you’re always looking for how many black professors are on campus, or Asian, or whatever race that you identify as… seeing black students makes me happy… …In Congo… …everyone looks like you, you have that comfort… …someone who looks like you gives you comfort, you feel like you connect them, you feel more comfortable around them… …it’s just good to see your people”

This may sound harmless enough but two things. One, it seems unlikely that a white person saying those same things would be celebrated, accepted, or even considered employable. Imagine a white person living in an Asian part of a city who then openly celebrates seeing other white people, and admits that seeing people with matching skin tones creates a sense of “belonging.”

Two, she seems to be showing that she doesn’t view white people subjectively. In my view, Loufoua should not have a job where she gets to decide the fate of families with whom she doesn’t “feel comfortable around or connect with.”

Below is a video with opinion and information from the family about “Baby Cyrus”:

Here you can see the grandfather, Diego Rodriguez speaking about the situation in front of St. Luke’s Hospital:

Interview with the Idaho Freedom Foundation:

The family is planning protests and there have already been some, as well as lots of social media activism. It’s unclear to us if they’re able to request a new social worker, if they would want to, or if it would make any difference at this point.

This story may be updated with time as more developments and protests unfold regarding the dynamic situation.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of Valiant News, its management, or its owner.