American Idol alum Syesha Mercado has reunited with her oldest child after he was taken away from her months ago.
Mercado’s baby boy, Amen’Ra, was taken away for her in a case referred to as a “medical kidnapping.”
After having difficulties with her breast milk supply, Mercado said she and her partner took their then 13-month-old son to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. She said her son was dehydrated and not accepting other fluids.
Their son was hospitalized, but Mercado was removed from the hospital, and her son was taken from both Mercado and her partner, Tyron Deener, by the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“We were treated like criminals just basically for going in the hospital and doing what a lot of parents do—seek medical assistance,” Mercado said. “Never could I have imagined going to that specific hospital to get help for my child, but walking away without my child.
The couple’s fight to regain custody of their children drew widespread media attention in August. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump joined the case to help Mercado and Deener. In August, they reunited with their daughter, who was also taken.
“The only thing we’ve done as parents is going to get assistance for our son,” Deener said at a press conference in August. He claimed they were targeted by authorities, in part, because of their vegan lifestyle. “We’ve been judged on the way we look, the way we present ourselves. We’ve been criminalized. We had our son and daughter removed from us for lack of understanding.”
Now, more than six months after losing their son, baby Amen’Ra is back home. The happy parents captured the moment on video as they celebrated his return home.
“AMEN’RA IS OFFICIALLY HOME!!!” the American Idol finalist wrote in the Instagram post’s caption.
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