FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT CARMEN FLORES CASTRO, No. 19-16048 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 2:18-cv-01739- GMN-CWH BERTHA HERNANDEZ RENTERIA, Respondent-Appellee. OPINION Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada Gloria M. Navarro, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted July 7, 2020 Seattle, Washington Filed August 19, 2020 Before: MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS, D. MICHAEL FISHER, * And MILAN D. SMITH, JR., Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. * The Honorable D. Michael Fisher, United States Chief Circuit Judge for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting by designation. 2 FLORES CASTRO V. HERNANDEZ RENTERIA SUMMARY ** Hague Convention The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of a petition for the return of a child to Mexico pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Petitioner, the child’s paternal half-sister, alleged that the child’s maternal grandmother either wrongfully removed her from Mexico or wrongfully retained her in the United States. The panel concluded that the date of wrongful removal or retention was more than one year prior to the date of the petition, which was filed on September 7, 2018. The panel held that the district court clearly erred in its factual finding regarding the date of removal, which was August 25, 2017. The panel further held that the grandmother’s removal of the child was wrongful because it was in breach of a Mexican court’s rights of custody. The panel gave great weight to the Mexican court’s own rulings regarding the wrongfulness of the removal, and it concluded that neither the petitioner nor the Mexican court gave affirmative prior consent to the child’s removal from Mexico. Because the date of wrongful removal was more than one year prior to the date of the petition, the return of the child was not mandatory, and the district court had discretion whether to order her return to Mexico. The panel affirmed the district court’s discretionary decision not to order the ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. FLORES CASTRO V. HERNANDEZ RENTERIA 3 return of the child pending custody proceedings because she was now settled in Las Vegas, Nevada. COUNSEL Vincent Mayo (argued), The Abrams & Mayo Law Firm, Las Vegas, Nevada, for Petitioner-Appellant. Richard C. Gordon (argued), Kelly H. Dove, Eric D. Walther, and Evan Hall, Snell & Wilmer LLP, Las Vegas, Nevada, for Respondent-Appellee. OPINION M. SMITH, Circuit Judge: Carmen Flores Castro appeals the district court’s denial of her petition for the return to Mexico of Z.F.M.Z., a now ten-year-old child who is Carmen’s paternal half-sister, pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (the Hague Convention or Convention). Bertha Hernandez Renteria, Z.F.M.Z.’s maternal grandmother, who has been raising Z.F.M.Z. in Las Vegas, Nevada since 2017, opposes the petition. The parties’ dispute concerns the precise date on which ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals