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Ammon Bundy Photograph: Leah Nash/The Guardian

Rebel cowboys: how the Bundy family sparked a new battle for the American west

This article is more than 7 years old
Ammon Bundy Photograph: Leah Nash/The Guardian

After leading two armed standoffs against the government, the jailed Bundy family awaits trial for their land-rights crusade that they say is ‘worth dying for’

by in Bunkerville, Nevada, and Portland, Oregon

Ryan Bundy first began starving himself in the third grade. Raised by devout Mormons and lifelong cowboys on a remote desert ranch in Nevada, Ryan had a reputation as a stubborn child, but his hunger strike was unlike anything his family had seen before.

It started one lunch period at Virgin Valley elementary school in Mesquite, a tiny rural public school with just a few dozen students in each class. Ryan sat outside alone until the lunch ladies came to the playground and tried to persuade him to eat. He refused.

But Ryan’s protest wasn’t about food. It was a political statement. It was around the early 1980s and Jane Bundy had signed up her five children for subsidized school meals – the ranching family had lost money on a group of cattle and cash was tight. But her husband Cliven was livid. As a southern Nevada rancher who had developed a deep mistrust of the government and great disdain for public assistance programs, Cliven had taught his children never to ask for handouts.

Cliven and Jane fought about the lunches – one of many disagreements that eventually led to their divorce. Ryan sided with his dad, and his playground protest was ultimately a success. After three days, Jane returned to preparing homemade meals.

“My dad fixed the problem and took us off the program,” Ryan, now 43, recalled. “It was instilled in me that we’re supposed to earn what we have and not to take from others.”

Ryan recounted this early act of civil disobedience during a recent interview in a windowless 8ft by 8ft room in a high-security county jail in Portland, Oregon. He wore a pink undershirt, white wristband and denim blue jail uniform. His latest protest had not gone as planned. Back in January 2016, Ryan and his 40-year-old brother Ammon had led an army of rightwing activists, some of them heavily armed “militiamen”, in an occupation of a federal wildlife center. The standoff, the family’s latest armed confrontation with the government, cemented the Bundy family’s reputation as heroes to ultra-conservatives in the west who have long been critical of federal land-use restrictions – an anti-government movement that has flourished during Barack Obama’s presidency.

But today, Ryan and Ammon, along with their father and two other Bundy brothers, are isolated in jail cells awaiting federal trials that could condemn them to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Ammon Bundy keeps a copy of the US constitution in his pocket while in jail. Photograph: Leah Nash/The Guardian

How the ‘west was won’

The Bundy ranch is located in Bunkerville, an unincorporated desert town 80 miles north-east of Las Vegas with around 1,000 residents.

Outside the modest white home is a front yard protected by a small, metal gate with a sign that reads “cattle, melons & kids”. Skipper, the family’s current “bodyguard”, led me inside to a living room decorated with paintings of horses and religious plaques. There was a cowboy-themed mantel over the fireplace.

On the day I visited in February, Carol Bundy, Cliven’s wife, looked exhausted. Her iPhone and home phone rang off the hook with calls from reporters and supporters seeking updates on Ammon and Ryan, who had been arrested by the FBI days earlier.

Their 25-year-old daughter, Bailey Logue, pregnant with her third child, was on the living room couch, furiously texting on her phone and typing on her laptop, monitoring the Bundy ranch’s popular social media accounts.

On the wall was a sign that read: “Remember who you are and the family name you bear.”

Cliven and Jane, his first wife, divorced when their oldest child was around 12 years old, and Carol said she thinks of all 14 children as her own now. The Bundy children have gone on to have large families of their own – giving Cliven more than 60 grandchildren and three great grandchildren. As we spoke, some of them ran in circles around us, playing with a lasso.

“The west was won by people standing up,” Carol said, explaining how Cliven’s ancestors were some of the first to settle in the Virgin Valley in south-east Nevada and north-west Arizona in the 1870s. “It runs deep in our blood. Do you give up on something that is born in you?”

The family says ancestors on Cliven’s maternal side were some of the first Mormon settlers of Bunkerville in 1877. Cliven contends that long before the federal government began restricting land use in the west, the family had claims to the land in Bunkerville, inheriting the authority to ranch and farm from their ancestors – although property records show that Cliven’s parents did not actually purchase the family’s current property until 1948.

From left, Cliven, Carol, Angie and Bailey with some of the Bundy children. Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

Cliven was born on 29 April 1946, the same year the government created the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency that regulates public lands and has expanded dramatically over the past half century, eventually becoming the chief adversary of Cliven and cowboys across the west.

Cliven, wearing a tie and brown vest with a miniature US constitution peeking out from his front pocket, entered the house some hours after I arrived and quickly disappeared into another room.

When we finally sat down to talk, Cliven, often mumbling tangent-filled rambles, explained how there should be no debate that he had the authority to use the land around his property any way he pleased.

“I have certain rights that I either bought or inherited on this land ... I own the forage and the water.”

Who really owns the land?

The position of cattle ranchers such as Cliven and the westerners who view him as one of the most important patriots of modern times – and now a “political prisoner” – is that cowboys first settled the west, and that the US government unlawfully asserted its authority in these territories.

The Bundys claim that a small subsection of the constitution – Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 –restricts federal ownership of land to Washington DC, meaning national parks and monuments, BLM lands, wildlife refuges and wilderness reclamation areas are all unconstitutional. They say they are willing to work with and pay fees to county or state regulators but that the constitution blocks the federal government from charging grazing taxes.

Constitutional experts say the Bundys are misreading a narrow clause and that a separate part of the text clearly gives the federal government authority to manage public lands – a power that the US supreme court has affirmed.

Others argue that if anyone has ancestral claims to western lands it’s the Native Americans who first occupied the region and that it would be an environmental disaster to allow unregulated grazing.

Adding to the tension, Obama has, in recent years, significantly boosted land preservation efforts, formally protecting more land and water than any other president in history. The Democrat enraged conservatives when he recently designated three new national monuments in the west, sparking criticisms that he was orchestrating a massive “land grab”.

Tensions between cowboys and feds

The Bundy family’s fight officially began in March 1993 when, after nearly 40 years, Cliven abruptly stopped paying grazing fees and applying for BLM permits. Grazing fees had increased in the previous decade by around 30%, though the prices fluctuated each year, and by 1993 it cost Cliven roughly $2,000 a year to have 85 cattle graze on the federal lands by his property. The family was also furious that the US Fish and Wildlife Service had classified the desert tortoise as a “threatened” species and was moving forward with further efforts to restrict land access.

“Dad ... fired the BLM,” said Arden Bundy, 18, Cliven’s youngest son.

The BLM, however, saw it differently.

That year, Cliven sent repeated letters to the government saying he intended to graze cattle “pursuant to my vested grazing rights” and claiming that the BLM had not produced documents showing it had jurisdiction over the public lands.

Within months, the BLM informed Cliven that he was trespassing, ordering him to remove his cattle. Tensions between the cowboys and federal regulators quickly escalated.

On 24 January 1994, BLM agents placed a copy of a “demand for payment” notice on Cliven’s car. According to the BLM’s account, Cliven got out of his truck, accused the federal agency of harassment, and threw the document out of his window before driving off.

The Bundy family. Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

One of Cliven’s sons then picked it up and tore it into pieces in front of the government workers.

On 3 March 1994, Cliven sent a check for $1,961.47 to Clark County for grazing fees – his way of making a statement that he was willing to pay taxes to local governments, but not to the feds. The county refused to cash the check.

Four years later, a federal court ordered Cliven to remove his livestock from public lands. He refused.

Federal officials fined Cliven for every day he refused to pay, but his cattle continued to graze – and multiply. By 2011, the BLM told Cliven that it intended to impound his cows.

In response, Cliven publicly stated his family motto – that he “would do whatever it takes” to stop the BLM.

In March 2014, the agency told him it would soon proceed with its mass seizure operation. Cliven responded by saying he was “ready to do battle”.

By then, BLM said Cliven owed more than $1m.

The next month, his 14 children, living throughout Utah and Nevada, returned to the Bundy ranch to stand up to the BLM.

They were prepared for death, said Mel, Cliven’s 42-year-old son. He and his wife Briana went so far as to write up a last will and testament.

“If it means losing my life, then yes, I am willing,” Mel said. Briana, 30, said her husband wanted her to stay away for her safety, but she said she felt obligated to help – even if it meant she and her husband would be killed, leaving their four kids without parents.

Nothing will stop the Bundys, Briana added: “They’ll have to kill every one of us.”

More than 400 people from across the US showed up to the ranch to defend the man who had become their cowboy hero.

“One of the biggest things that inspired us was everybody coming to our aid,” said Angie Bundy, Ryan’s wife. “We had people from all over the country that came out and knew what the consequences could be, and yet they came anyway.”

The supporters camped out, pitching tents in the family’s back yard and waiting for the government to arrive.

‘Taking our land back’

More than 20 snipers, some carrying assault rifles, positioned themselves behind concrete barriers high above on highway bridges and aimed their weapons at the officers below them. Some were dressed in military-style tactical gear, while others hid behind unarmed supporters, using them as shields to mask their movements.

This was the dramatic scene that the government says it faced on the morning of 12 April 2014 when, two decades after Cliven had stopped paying grazing fees, law enforcement officials attempted to take away the rancher’s cows.

The standoff unfolded on a desolate desert range near the Bundy house.

Early in the morning, the BLM managed to corral about 400 cattle into an “impoundment site”. But Cliven had hundreds of supporters at his back, and he and his sons quickly orchestrated a plan.

Cliven told a crowd of followers that “God [is] going to be with us” and that it was time “to take our land back”. He then commanded a group to travel about three miles down a dirt road by horse and meet near where the cattle were being held.

Cliven Bundy told a crowd of followers that ‘God [is] going to be with us’ and that it was time ‘to take our land back’. Photograph: John Locher/AP

By around 11.50am, Ammon and a group of protesters were 150 yards from the cattle, which were protected by a makeshift metal gate guarded by two officers.

Sixty yards from the gate, the cowboys formed a “human line” that stretched across the site, and Mel, Ammon’s older brother, soon after brought a separate group of about 40 protesters on horseback.

Agents called for backup, but the FBI and the BLM were hugely outnumbered – 50 officers against roughly 400 protesters.

Officers used loudspeakers to order the crowd to disperse. The activists didn’t budge. Meanwhile, some of the police started spotting the gunmen above them on bridges and within the crowd.

The officers said there were too many protesters and “too many guns to count”, and they had nowhere to hide if someone started shooting. They were surrounded.

The government retreated and the Bundys celebrated victory.

“I remember looking down gun barrels right in my face and just thinking I wasn’t scared,” recalled Arden, Cliven’s youngest son, who was then 16 years old and helped organize cowboys at the ranch. “They’re looking right at you with a gun in your face, and you’re feeling strength.”

The cows were released and agents left the compound, some traumatized by the experience. “Many of these officers, some of them combat veterans, remain profoundly affected emotionally by this event to this day,” prosecutors later said.

With the FBI gone, Cliven said his ranch and the surrounding Bunkerville area became “the freest part of the land”.

For the following 22 months, he and his sons faced no consequences for the armed conflict or his family’s continued refusal to pay fees or move his cows. When I sat with him in his living room in February, Cliven said he remained proud of that victory.

“Here on the Bundy ranch ... we the people, the public has had access to this area,” he said. “As a rancher, I have enjoyed freedom.”

Ten days after our meeting, the US government took him into custody, leveling felony conspiracy charges against him that could condemn him to die behind bars.

‘Racism is alive and well’

One week after the FBI retreated from the 2014 standoff, Cliven’s celebrity status came crashing down.

Most of the media circus had left Bunkerville, but Cliven was still holding regular press conferences at his ranch where a few supporters lingered.

On 19 April 2014, wearing a cowboy hat and short-sleeve white button down, Cliven, speaking to a conference that drew a total of one reporter and photographer, went on a meandering rant about abortion, abuses of welfare and race.

In comments reported by the New York Times, he said: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the negro.

“Because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

The backlash was swift and brutal. US senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Dean Heller of Nevada, who had expressed support for the Bundys’ cause, were forced to dissociate themselves with the rancher. Cliven lost allies in the conservative media, too: Fox News host Sean Hannity said his remarks were “beyond repugnant”, and radio host Glenn Beck called him “unhinged from reality”.

Cliven Bundy lost allies in the conservative media after ranting about abortion, abuses of welfare and race. Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

Many saw the remarks as a direct manifestation of the deeply embedded racism of rural white conservative westerners.

“If you went and did a study of the people who live where they are, I think you would find racism is alive and well,” said Terri Robertson, a conservationist and cousin of Cliven who lives in Las Vegas and has spoken out against the family.

Ammon said the “white media” was the only group angered by his father’s comments, and that the remarks were “one of the best things that ever happened” because it showed the family who their true supporters were.

Since being locked up in a city prison, Ammon said he has come to better understand the plight of African Americans.

“I’ve created a lot of friends in here that are black people,” Ammon said, with a smile. A fellow inmate recently told him: “‘Bundy, you know, I see what they did to you. They treated you like you were black,’” Ammon recalled. “He goes, ‘If you ever come to one of the prisons I’m at, you can sit at the black table.’”

The legacy of racism is not hard to trace in rural Nevada – nor in the Bundy family. Cliven’s cousin, Kim Bundy, who records show is based in Ruth, Nevada, owns 120 acres of land that he calls the “Nigger Abe” place. Like Cliven, Kim’s land has been at the center of conflicts with the government over land-use rights.

State records show that Kim has written angry letters to the government – which repeatedly use the N-word to describe his property – explaining how his family and the previous landowners have “had many battles” over water rights. Asked about the government land-use disputes Kim has had over the years, Carol, Cliven’s wife, said: “They haven’t taken as strong of a stand as us. They’ve tried to deal with it through the system. It never works through the system. It’s just like I say – you’re not going to get any justice in a federal court.”

An ‘overwhelming urge’ to intervene

Ammon Bundy moved from the family ranch after he completed his Mormon mission around 1997. He briefly worked construction in Las Vegas but soon after moved to Cedar City, Utah, for college.

After a few semesters, Ammon dropped out and started a small repair business, which he ran when he met his now wife, Lisa.

“He was really flirtatious,” she recalled. “I had dated lots of boys, but none of them were men. This guy was a man. He was mature.”

Ammon and Lisa married in July 2001 and eventually moved to Arizona, where he ran Valet Fleet Service. But after the 2014 Bunkerville standoff, the family relocated to Idaho, in part because they “were hoping to get away from the spotlight”, Lisa said.

But in 2015, Bundy supporters began sending the family stories about Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, two Harney County, Oregon, ranchers convicted for multiple arson offenses that federal prosecutors said they committed on public lands. Dwight, 74, and Steven, 47, have claimed that they were burning off an invasive species in one case and protecting their home from a growing fire in another.

The federal government alleged that the Hammonds were actually covering up evidence of illegal hunting. After serving relatively short prison sentences imposed by a sympathetic US district judge (three months for Dwight and one year for Steven), the US Department of Justice appealed, seeking a harsher punishment.

The Hammonds were re-sentenced to five years and ordered to return to prison, outraging local Oregon ranchers with a decision many called “double jeopardy”.

Once he started reading about the plight of the Hammonds, Ammon said he felt an “overwhelming urge” to intervene.

Ammon Bundy holds a news conference at the Malheur wildlife refuge in January during the first days of the Oregon standoff. Photograph: Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images

“It just consumed me. It became very urgent,” Ammon told me from jail. “I couldn’t sleep … It began to be very clear to me that the federal government’s desire was to take their land.”

The Hammonds, who were planning to turn themselves in, were scheduled to return to prison on 4 January.

Ammon, Ryan and other supporters helped organize and participate in a large, peaceful rally on 2 January in the local town of Burns.

Eventually, however, Ammon and a group of followers, including some who had been involved in the 2014 Nevada standoff, broke off from the group and drove 30 miles outside of Burns to the headquarters of the Malheur wildlife refuge, near the Hammonds’ ranch.

In a 3 January video shot at the refuge, Ammon said: “We’re planning on staying here for several years,” adding: “We are calling people to come out here and stand” and “we need you to bring your arms.” The Bundys called themselves the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, renamed the refuge the Harney County Resource Center – and said they wouldn’t leave until the Hammonds were freed.

The takeover baffled locals who had collaborated with Ammon to organize the peaceful rally. The Hammonds didn’t want this kind of support, either.

“The Hammonds indicated that they had fear and they didn’t really want [Ammon] to help,” Cliven admitted to me after Ammon’s arrest. “[Dwight] sort of rejected my suggestion of making a stand, and he sort of rejected Ammon’s efforts.”

Bailey, Cliven’s daughter who runs the Bundy Facebook page, said she saw the standoff unfold on a live stream just like everyone else. “We kind of all felt the same way – just kind of shocked, because none of us knew,” she said. “I had to catch myself up to try to understand. Why would they take over a federal building?”

Bailey and Angie, Ryan’s wife, both said Ryan didn’t even know Ammon’s plan until it was happening. Asked about how they decided to stage an occupation, Ryan, in jail, said: “I’m gonna defer a lot of that to my brother.”

Members of the ‘militia’ monitor the entrance to the wildlife refuge in Oregon. Photograph: Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images

Even if they were publicly supporting Ammon and Ryan, some of the Bundy women were incredulous.

“I was freaking out,” Angie admitted. “I wish I could say I was really calm and just really cool about it, but no. I was, ‘What? What are you doing?’ I’ve asked myself that a lot when we’ve been married, though, so that’s not a new question.”

Shiree, the eldest Bundy daughter, who lives in Utah, said she was saddened by the Hammonds’ story but couldn’t understand why her brothers would stage this kind of protest. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what are they thinking?’ In my personal opinion, I did not think it was a good idea.”

To Shiree and others, defending the family’s cattle in 2014 was logical and necessary. But this was harder to justify.

Davey, the 39-year-old Bundy brother who also lives in Utah, did not think it was worth the risk to travel to Harney County to join the protest, according to his wife, Marylynn, 40. “He wanted to be with his family. He thinks that’s the number one thing in life.” She added: “My husband has always said you don’t want to get into the federal court system.”

From the start, due to the hesitations, doubts and confusion that even some Bundys privately expressed, the Oregon standoff did not galvanize hundreds of supporters the way the Bunkerville battle did.

However, dozens did show up to the Malheur refuge the first week of January to join the occupation, which quickly attracted organized, heavily armed militia groups.

A protester rides his horse during the occupation of the wildlife refuge in Oregon. Photograph: Rob Kerr/AFP/Getty Images

Ammon gave daily speeches to crowds of shivering journalists – myself among them – who were improperly dressed for the frigid temperatures and icy terrain. Armed guards sat by a fire at the entrance and told reporters when they were free to enter the compound.

Over the first two weeks of the occupation, fears about a violent end to the occupation subsided for some. The occupiers, their supporters, locals and reporters roamed the headquarters, and although the FBI had a large presence in Burns, no one was arrested or even confronted. Large supplies of food and other donations were steadily flowing – fresh meat, canned goods, coffee, crackers, grits, pancakes, juice, soda, reams of paper towels, and everything the group needed to get by.

The occupiers, supported by a small group of women, had comfortable sleeping arrangements, hot meals three times a day, daily morning press conferences and an organized “security” team keeping watch. The activists even made use of government trucks that they said they found on site with keys sitting in them. They held meetings inside a quaint bird museum.

Ryan, along with another protest leader, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, an Arizona rancher, even left the refuge and drove many hours to Utah to try to recruit additional ranchers to support the cause. They returned to the occupation without incident.

But a week later, the standoff took a violent – and fatal – turn.

‘I’m not so sure you can break a Bundy’

The rapid and stunning downfall of the Bundy family came after Oregon state troopers, attempting to arrest the Bundy brothers and key protest leaders, shot and killed Finicum on 26 January. Police said the shooting was self defense and that Finicum was reaching for a gun, and Finicum and Bundy supporters said it was a coordinated assassination of a passionate defender of the constitution, followed by an FBI cover-up.

Regardless of the circumstances, the Bundys – who for two years had avoided any consequences for their protests – saw their worlds unravel.

In the initial days after Ammon and Ryan were taken into custody, the family back in Bunkerville said they were energized to fight back.

“They want to break people,” Angie said. “I’m not so sure you can break a Bundy.”

“You can hurt them, but they are going to come back with a fury,” Carol, Cliven’s wife, chimed in.

“We’re more fired up,” added Bailey.

Arden – the 18-year-old Bundy son, who wore a belt buckle that read “All Around Cowboy” – said he was inspired and motivated by Finicum’s death. “This whole thing is worth dying for, and if I was able to die for this cause, I would too.”

But the arrests of Ammon and Ryan and the death of Finicum were just the first in a series of devastating events for the Bundys that unfolded over the next month.

Two weeks later, with four holdouts remaining at the Malheur occupation, Cliven declared he would be travelling to Oregon to support the protesters. “I think we oughta take this country back, and I think it’s time the feds get out of there,” he told me by phone on the night of 10 February.

Ryan Bundy and his brother, Ammon, are now entangled in two major criminal cases. Photograph: Leah Nash/The Guardian

Hours later, he was arrested at Portland international airport, and the FBI successfully orchestrated a peaceful end to the 41-day occupation.

One week later, Cliven, Ammon and Ryan were formally indicted on 16 felony offenses in Nevada federal court for crimes stemming from the 2014 standoff, meaning Ammon and Ryan were now entangled in two major criminal cases.

Two weeks after that, federal prosecutors further expanded their Nevada case, arresting Davey and Mel Bundy, saying the brothers helped lead an armed assault against the government in the 2014 standoff. The next week, Oregon prosecutors levelled yet another round of charges against Ammon and Ryan.

By April, federal prosecutors had filed charges against 26 people for the Oregon standoff and 19 people for the Nevada conflict.

A dozen have since pleaded guilty, but the Bundys and many others have vowed to fight the charges in court, starting with a high-stakes trial scheduled for 7 September.

If prosecutors are successful, the Bundy men and their followers could spend decades incarcerated in federal prisons, a huge blow to the anti-government movement that in recent years has spread like a wildfire across the west.

Rise of conservative militia movement

The US shifted the way it responds to extremists after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. Timothy McVeigh, convicted of domestic terrorism, was motivated by government standoffs with rightwing groups in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.

The justice department created a domestic terrorism committee dedicated to prosecuting anti-government radicals, which helped minimize the movement.

But after Barack Obama entered the White House, anti-government militia groups surged – from just 42 groups in 2008 to a peak of 334 in 2011, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a not-for-profit group that tracks rightwing extremists and hate groups.

Although Ammon and Ryan both said they detested the labels “anti-government militias” and “armed rightwing extremists”, experts say the rise of the Bundy family is inextricably linked to the rise of a conservative militia movement in the 2000s.

“Cliven tapped into a movement that has been growing steadily since President Obama was elected, and they were very much looking for a fight,” said Ryan Lenz, senior writer with the law center, who has done extensive research on the Bundys. “Nobody had ever so defiantly stood in the face of the federal government and the face of the BLM.”

Braxton Logue with the Bundys’ bodyguard, Skipper. Photograph: Josh Hawkins/The Guardian

Cliven, whose story spread on Facebook and social media, became the poster child for families who blamed the government for their economic hardships.

“A lot of Americans, especially American westerners and conservative white men, still believe in this imagery of the American west and the idea of the rancher and that it’s sort of the moral center of what it means to be an American,” said Catherine McNicol Stock, history professor at Connecticut College and an expert on militias. “The optics of it were really important. He sort of fit what people wanted to see.”

In the same way that Donald Trump has surged with support from bitter white voters fed up with politics and deeply resentful of Obama, the so-called Patriot Movement has thrived off extreme anger at the federal government that is easy to find in rural communities in the west.

“The greatest danger that the American people have ever faced is federal agencies,” Ammon said. “If they continue to act without checks and balances, they will literally destroy the freedoms of the American people.”

Asked how the Bundys would turn the government’s harsh prosecution of them into a victory, Ryan hesitated.

“The path,” he said, “is not clear.”

Families torn apart

Ryan, Ammon, Mel and Davey leave behind a total of 25 young children and wives with limited or no income.

In recent months, the Bundy ranch Facebook page has featured many more emotional accounts from the Bundy women, lamenting the separation from their husbands and judges’ refusals to grant them bail. The wives frequently ask followers to donate to legal funds.

“The real victims here are the wives and children that are left in the wake of this mess,” said Shiree, the eldest daughter, who was particularly distraught when she called me to say that the FBI had arrested Davey, who, she noted, had deliberately stayed away from the Oregon protests.

Ryan Bundy in jail. Photograph: Leah Nash/The Guardian

Angie, who has eight kids, ages one to 16, said she has tried to stay strong, but some days it feels impossible. “He’s my sole support,” she said, adding that in some conversations with Ryan, it’s been hard not to feel angry. “I’m like, ‘Did you even think this through? What did you expect me to [do]?’

In an interview, Ammon was the most emotional, talking about the dozens of Bundy children who he said are “crying for their fathers”. “I wonder if ever a family has been prosecuted or persecuted this way.”

His wife, Lisa, said at least one of their six children cried every night because they missed their father. “They all sleep in my bed or bedroom. They don’t want to be away from me.”

Marylynn, Davey’s wife, said her husband was in the process of building a house for the family – six kids, ages one to 15 – when he was taken into custody. “My kids are sick, they miss their dad so much,” she said.

Anne Stoddard, Marylynn’s mother, who is now helping take care of the kids, said she struggles to explain to her grandchildren why their father is locked up. “He’s not a violent person.”

With Davey’s construction company on hold, Anne said she did not know how the family would get by financially if he remains incarcerated for much longer.

“He would be better off if he was able to provide for his family,” she said, adding with a sigh, “Now, they are going to have to rely on the government.”

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