Case Update (19 Dec 2025): Jardim v. Paez; Children ordered Returned to Venezuela; Asylum Application pending made their settlement tenuous

The parties are parents to two children, born in Venezuela, and who lived and attended school in Venezuela their entire lives. Respondent Mother had family in Florida. On June 14, 2024, the Petitioner Father gave Respondent permission to take the children to the USA to see her family, departing Venezuela on June 26, 2024, and returning on September 18, 2024. On September 6, 2024, the Respondent texted the Petitioner and indicated that she wanted to remain in the USA with the children, giving reasons that she felt that the USA could present a “better life” for the children. The Petitioner responded to the text saying, “I’m telling you right now, don’t even think about it … You stay, I’ll stay with the children[.]” In December 2024, the Respondent applied for asylum and for withholding of removal for her and the children, the application of which is still pending. The parties’ stipulate, and the court found, that the Petitioner Father established his prima facie case in support of the return of the children to Venezuela under the Hague Abduction Convention. The Respondent Mother argued several different exceptions.

The court concluded that the Petitioner did not consent to the child’s relocation, and promptly expressed his objection. Even though he did delay in filing the instant petition for about one year, that is not to be construed as consent, particularly since he credibly testified that he sought Venezuelan counsel to take legal steps in Venezuela to seek their return. The court pinpointed the date on which the Mother’s retention of the children in Florida became wrongful as September 18, 2024, the date on which they were to return to Venezuela, and not September 6, 2024, the date when the Respondent texted the Father, meaning that the one year and now settled exception was unavailable to the Mother to argue. In an abundance of caution, the court also concluded that, in the alternative, if the Father had filed his petition more than one year from the wrongful retention, the children were not settled. The evidence the Respondent presented in arguing they were settled “speaks primarily to the children’s happiness in the United States, not whether they have developed ‘a stable, permanent, and nontransitory life in their new country[.]’” The court made note that the children’s pending asylum application means that there is nothing that would protect the children, or their Mother, from “being deported at any moment.” This seemed to hang heavy on the court’s decision. The court could also not accept the Mother’s view that the older, 10-year-old, child was sufficiently mature to object. As the court noted, in nearly all of the other court cases to address this issue, the court had the opportunity to hear from the child, either directly or indirectly, to make the assessment as to their maturity. This was not the case here. The oldest child did not testify, and the parties offered contradictory testimony as to whether he was mature.

Therefore, the children were ordered returned to Venezuela.