Thoughts on our circumstances...: CPS has become America's largest state-sponsored...

Editor's note: ...child-trafficking operation: an internal audit admits 83% of the 480,000 children it seizes annually are wrongfully taken, over 200,000 vanish forever into a foster system that feeds predators, all fueled by federal bounties for every removal and adoption. The viral Baby Cyrus case proves the playbook — a loving pastor's family targeted over vaccines and a rescheduled appointment, infant ripped away at gunpoint by twenty squad cars — and only returned after massive protests. This is not child protection; it is industrialized kidnapping shielded by secret courts and taxpayer money. "Never in America" exposes the nightmare every parent must wake up to now. Ultimately, greed and money coupled to a frenzied out of control bureaucracy is responsible for this economic and human carnage. It becomes even more egregious when you examine the order-following bureaucratic bottom feeders in law enforcement who are stripping children away from their parents.

Child Protective Services isn't protecting kids—it's a federally subsidized kidnapping cartel raking in billions by incentivizing family destruction under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, an open-ended entitlement dumping $9.7 billion annually into states for every eligible child ripped from homes and warehoused in foster care (50-83% federal reimbursement per child, plus admin and training costs). States score extra "adoption bounties" of $4,000-$12,000 per finalized foster-to-adoption—higher for "special needs" kids—to hit quotas, turning traumatized children into taxable revenue streams while 84% of removals involve zero physical abuse, just poverty or noncompliance. This isn't welfare; it's industrialized trafficking, with $34 billion total child welfare spending in FY2022 (56% IV-E-fueled) rewarding overreach that orphans 200,000+ kids yearly into predator pipelines—dismantle it before your family funds the next bonus.

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Inside the CPS Machine: Government Overreach, Trafficking Pipelines, and the Families Being Torn Apart w/ Ryan Matta

What happens when the State decides your child belongs to them?

By Man In America | December 11, 2025

There are certain topics I'd give anything to avoid.

I'd love to spend every episode talking about faith, resilience, prepping, family—anything that uplifts. But then there are the conversations that drag you, kicking and screaming, into the darkest corners of our country, and once you see what's there, you can't unsee it.

That's what this interview with my friend Ryan Matta did to me.

Ryan's fearless. Stubborn in all the right ways. And allergic to controlled narratives. Whether it's human trafficking, government corruption, cartel operations, the border, foreign policy—Ryan will go where other people won't. And he doesn’t rattle easily. When he tells me that something's the darkest material he’s ever worked on, I listen.

His new documentary, "Never in America," is about Child Protective Services—CPS—the three-letter agency nobody wants to talk about, but which may be the most sinister of them all. Not because the people inside it are uniquely evil (though some are), but because the system itself has been engineered into a machine that destroys families on an industrial scale.

I thought I understood government corruption. I've covered the FBI, CIA, DOJ, CDC. I thought I'd seen the worst. But nothing—nothing—prepared me for what Ryan revealed about CPS.

It is one thing to believe the government is incompetent. It is another to realize it is kidnapping children—hundreds of thousands of them—every single year.

And most Americans have no idea.

This essay is my attempt to process what I learned from Ryan: the story of Baby Cyrus, the numbers that made my stomach drop, and the horrifying picture of the foster system that emerged as he dug deeper. It’s not comfortable to read. It's not comfortable to write. But if you're a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a human being—this matters.

Because what Ryan revealed forces us to confront a reality that sounds like dystopian fiction, except it's happening right here, right now, in our country.

And the first time you hear it, it breaks something inside you.

The Case That Pulled Back the Curtain: What Happened to Baby Cyrus

If you've never heard of the Baby Cyrus case, you're not alone. Despite becoming one of the most viral CPS cases in American history, it received almost no mainstream media coverage—because it exposed something the system desperately wants hidden.

The family at the center of it—Diego, his daughter Marissa, her husband, and their baby boy—are the picture of a normal, loving American family. Diego himself is a longtime pastor with a huge extended family and deep community roots. These aren't parents living on the edge of society, hiding from law enforcement, or struggling with addiction. These are the people we assume would be the least vulnerable to state overreach.

But when CPS wants your child, your virtue doesn't protect you.

Baby Cyrus had a medical condition—cyclic vomiting syndrome—a rare disorder with no cure, where a baby can vomit 10, 20, 30 times a day for several days at a time. The parents were doing everything right: taking him to doctors, monitoring him constantly, protecting him from choking dangers, and trying desperately to find solutions.

Then one nurse noticed the family didn’t vaccinate.

And that's when everything changed.

Ryan told me that the nurse's entire demeanor shifted. Suddenly the parents weren't seen as competent or caring—they became suspects. The hospital ordered them to attend a series of classes and weigh-ins, even forcing them to give Tylenol, despite the known harm. After several exhausting days, the mother woke up with a migraine and called to reschedule one of the mandatory classes. She left a voicemail.

Four hours later, CPS was hunting them.

No returned call. No conversation. No due process. Just a full-blown manhunt for a family whose "crime" was rescheduling a class.

They were already planning to move to Florida two months later. Out of pure fear—fear I now see was justified—they decided to leave early, hoping that if they got out of the jurisdiction, CPS would close the case. They had broken no laws. They had no charges against them. The only "danger" was that CPS wanted to seize their child, and they wanted to prevent it.

When they went to visit a friend—who happened to be a retired sheriff—law enforcement illegally geo-tracked their phones. They surrounded the home with nearly twenty squad cars.

Twenty.

Squad.

Cars.

For a pastor, his daughter, her husband, and a baby.

Ryan showed me the footage: guns were drawn, family members were ripped from vehicles, the sister mistaken as the mother was dragged out a window, cuffed, insulted, and arrested even after proving she wasn't the mom. The real mother was threatened, cornered, forced to hand over her baby "the easy way or the hard way." After she complied, they arrested her anyway.

Can you imagine handing your infant to a stranger with a gun pointed at you, knowing what the state is capable of—and then being arrested for complying?

Cyrus was taken to the hospital. The parents were jailed. And in any other CPS case, that would've been the end.

The vast majority never see their children again.

But this family had two rare advantages: an enormous network of church members and activists, and a close friendship with Ammon Bundy, who was running for governor of Idaho at the time. He mobilized protests overnight. Hundreds of people surrounded the hospital. Thousands sent complaints. The story spread like wildfire across independent media.

Eight days later—an unheard-of outcome in CPS cases—baby Cyrus was returned home.

But the victory was bittersweet. St. Luke's Hospital then sued Bundy and Diego for tens of millions of dollars, claiming the protests cost them revenue because they "had to shut down for safety."

To this day, Diego is still fighting off lawsuits that would bankrupt a billionaire—representing himself, because hiring legal defense would destroy his family financially.

The state couldn't keep the child.

So they're trying to destroy the family instead.

What No Parent Wants to Believe: Our Government Is Kidnapping Children

Hearing the details of the Baby Cyrus case shook me, but what unraveled next went much, much deeper.

This wasn't an isolated story.

It was a symptom of a monstrous system designed to tear apart families, funnel children into state custody, and in far too many cases… into the hands of predators.

I want to say this carefully. I don't believe every CPS worker is evil. Many think they're helping. Many joined because they care about children. But the structure—the incentives, laws, funding streams, and legal shield around CPS—creates machinery that rewards child removal and punishes family preservation.

And the numbers tell the truth.

Ryan shared the statistic that left me sick:

An internal CPS audit from 2019 found that 83.3% of the time, CPS was in the wrong when removing a child.

Let me say that again:

Over 83% of the children taken by CPS should never have been taken.

Last year alone, CPS removed 480,000 children.

If 83% were unnecessary, that means approximately 400,000 American children were wrongfully seized.

And here's the statistic that should haunt this entire nation:

Fifty-four percent of those children never see their parents again.

That's over 200,000 children a year—just vanishing into the system.

Imagine a foreign government kidnapping 200,000 American children a year. We'd call it war. But when our own government does it, it gets filed under "child welfare."

This isn't welfare.

This is state-sanctioned abduction.

The Foster System: A Pipeline to Trafficking

It would be one thing—still horrific, but one thing—if these children were being placed into safe, healthy foster homes.

But Ryan's research showed something far darker.

He told me statistic after statistic, each one landing like a blow to the gut. I could hear in his voice that he'd lived with this information long enough to stop being shocked, but not long enough to stop being angry.

Please go to substack to continue reading.

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Editor's note: Shutting down Child Protective Services (CPS)—the federally incentivized child-trafficking pipeline that wrongfully seizes 400,000 kids annually under Title IV-E funding—demands a multi-pronged assault on its legal, financial, and political lifelines, as abolitionists like upEND Movement and scholars such as Dorothy Roberts argue it's irredeemably racist and profit-driven. This isn't reform; it's eradication through "non-reformist reforms" that starve the beast while building community alternatives. Here's how to execute:

1. Starve the Funding Beast

Target Title IV-E's $9.7B annual blood money, which reimburses states 50-83% per removed child and bonuses adoptions like a bounty hunt. Petitions like Change.org's "STOP THE FEDERAL FUNDING TO CPS" demand Congress de-fund it, triggering nationwide investigations and immediate child returns—sign and amplify to force audits exposing the 83% wrongful removals. Rally for bills like Texas's HB 730, mandating "family Miranda" rights and banning anonymous tips to slash baseless probes.

2. Weaponize the Courts and Due Process

Sue CPS for 4th/14th Amendment violations (illegal seizures, coercion) under 42 U.S.C. §1983—file in federal district court, piercing qualified immunity with evidence of fraud or perjury (18 U.S.C. §1001). Challenge every removal via motions to suppress, administrative hearings, or grand jury indictments for kidnapping (18 U.S.C. §1201) and RICO racketeering. Demand body cams on caseworkers and criminal-court standards (beyond reasonable doubt) to gut their "preponderance of evidence" sham.

3. Mobilize Grassroots and Build Alternatives

Join abolition crews like Operation Stop CPS (focusing on Black/Brown families), National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (policy overhauls), and upEND (academic firepower for total elimination). Protest like Harlem's 2021 MLK Day marches; lobby for community-led prevention (universal housing, cash supports) via waivers under ASFA. X warriors echo this: Audit and shut it down before more vanish into trafficking.

4. Pressure Politicians and Expose the Rot

Flood Congress, governors, and AGs with demands for FBI probes into perjury, coercion, and undocumented kids on Medicaid (20K+ in Illinois alone). Back class-actions via FightCPS.org for settlements that bankrupt agencies. Truth-telling sessions (Kempe Center model) force insiders to confess harms, paving for state-by-state shutdowns.

This war ends when families reclaim power: De-fund, litigate, organize, replace. CPS isn't broken—it's built this way. Burn it down, or watch 200K kids vanish yearly into the void.

CPS is a child trafficking organization shut this fucking down @POTUS @JDVance @AGPamBondi @FBIDirectorKash @FBIDDBongino https://t.co/S9Zq3l3tRm
— molitar (@molitar) December 2, 2025

Federal Oversight of Child Protective Services (CPS)

Child Protective Services (CPS) is administered at the state and local levels across the U.S., but federal oversight, policy guidance, and primary funding responsibility fall under the Children's Bureau (CB) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The CB leads national efforts to prevent child abuse and neglect, supports state child welfare systems (including CPS), and administers key grant programs.

Current Leadership (as of December 2025)

• HHS Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (26th Secretary, sworn in early 2025).

• ACF Assistant Secretary: Alex J. Adams, PharmD, MPH (sworn in November 24, 2025; oversees the broader ACF, including the Children's Bureau).

• Children's Bureau Associate Commissioner: Jennifer Haight (serving in acting capacity since at least early 2025; directly advises on child welfare policy, including CPS administration, and leads CB operations).

These roles were confirmed via official HHS/ACF announcements and directories from late 2025.

Annual Federal Funding

The bulk of federal child welfare funding—supporting CPS investigations, foster care, adoption, and prevention—flows through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, an open-ended mandatory entitlement program. This reimburses states and tribes for eligible costs at a federal matching rate of 50-83% (higher for administrative/training in under-resourced areas).

• FY2025 Total Title IV-E Funding: Approximately $9.7 billion (mandatory, open-ended basis; held at FY2024 levels per P.L. 119-4, the FY2025 appropriations act). This includes:
• Foster Care & Prevention Services: ~$4.8 billion (maintenance, administration, and evidence-based prevention).

• Adoption Assistance: ~$3.4 billion (subsidies for ~560,000 children).

• Other IV-E Components (e.g., kinship navigators, guardianship): ~$1.5 billion.
• Broader Child Welfare Spending: Total federal child welfare outlays (including Title IV-B and other streams) reached ~$10.5 billion in FY2025, part of ACF's $63.9 billion overall grants. States spent an additional ~$24 billion from their own funds, for a national total exceeding $34 billion.

Actual expenditures can fluctuate based on state claims, but FY2025 saw a ~2% dip in Title IV-E obligations (~$90 million less than FY2024) due to policy shifts under the new administration. For the latest breakdowns, refer to HHS's TAGGS database or CB annual reports.