Peter Sharfin told the Albuquerque Journal he has contacted a lawyer about the incident at 2 a.m. Saturday when the youngsters ranging in age from 12 to 15 were ordered off Amtrak's Southwest Chief in Kingman, Ariz.

The train's crew radioed ahead for police to be waiting and claimed Sharfin's son had allegedly stolen an iPod from another passenger and the group was disorderly and disruptive.

Sharfin said he drove through the night from Taos, N.M., to pick up the group, who spent the night in a police conference room.

"I felt like it was child endangerment," Sharfin said to the newspaper. "These are children, alone, at night. I don't know how what they did could have been that friggin' bad."

Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham told the newspaper the missing iPod was returned and defended the crew's decision.

"They weren't just put off in the middle of nowhere, mind you," Graham told the Journal. "They were put off in the custody of the police department."