Case Update (9 July 2026): Terraza v. Zarate; Court Rejects Respondent’s Arguments, and Finds Child Must Return to Mexico
The parties are parents to one child, age 10 at the time of the evidentiary hearing on the Father’s petition to return the child pursuant to the Hague Abduction Convention. The parents shared legal and physical custody of the child according to the terms in a Mexican custody order, with the Father having visitation. The order also included a ne exeat provision, prohibiting travel with the child outside of Corregidora, Mexico without court authorization. The Father then suffered a car accident, causing brain injury, and the Mother filed to modify the custody order, seeking to “strip him of his custody rights”. The Mexican court set in a hearing for August 2025, and gave the Mother temporary physical custody of the child pending the hearing. On June 19, 2025, the Mother removed the child from Mexico and brought her to the USA, entering on a visitor visa, and telling the child it was for “vacation.” On April 30, 2026, the Father filed a petition, seeking the child’s return. The court held an evidentiary hearing on June 10-11, 2026. At the hearing, the Mother argued that the Father had no right of custody, was not exercising any right of custody, that the child was mature and objected to return, and returning the child would expose her to a grave risk of harm.
As to whether the Father had a right of custody, the Court found that the temporary custody order, obtained by the Mother after the Father’s car accident, did not extinguish the ne exeat provision, which gave him a right of custody. Further, a Mexican legal expert also noted that the subsequent order did not suspend his joint legal custody rights. Immediately before the child’s removal, the Father was also exercising his rights of custody “when possible and generally honored his financial obligations” (even though he deposited his child support into an unauthorized account). Even after the child’s removal, he bought school supplies for her, tried to find out where she was, attempted to call her on her birthday, and continued showing up to court hearings regarding her. As to the child’s alleged objections: the court concluded that the “child, … expressed no meaningful thoughts or preferences based on adult-like reasoning, considerations, or concerns”, that the child’s position was based on the Mother’s undue influence, and it “has no doubt that [Mother’s] deprivation of any contact between the child and her father for almost a year led the child to favor staying in the United States.” As to the Mother’s argument that returning the child would expose her to a grave risk of harm, the court disagreed. The Mother presented an October 2019 protective order that Father argued was issued as a matter of protocol, was without any factual findings on what caused it, and was dated and not instructive on the child’s circumstances on return. Mother argued that there was a 2024 investigation by the Mexican child-welfare office (DIF) after she made a report. But, the court concluded that this was a one-sided report and investigation. The only testimony as to what transpired to warrant such a report was simply a difference in parenting style when it came to disciplining the child. The Mother also presented the temporary custody order she secured in Mexico that suspended the Father’s visitation, but this Court found that there was nothing in the order establishing what caused any specific potential harm to the child, and certainly nothing that would indicate whether those “harms” would create a high probability of a grave risk of harm under the Abduction Convention. The Mother’s various concerns about the Father’s past parenting decisions did not rise to the level of a grave risk of harm. When the Mother submitted the child’s therapist’s reports, the Court concluded the therapist did not assess the veracity of the child’s statements to her, did not interview the Father or his relatives, and had numerous flaws in her forensic analysis. Nothing the child said in her in-camera interview would rise to the level of a grave risk of harm. Further, even if the child might struggle by returning to Mexico, accepting that argument would only incentivize abducting parents to conceal the abduction longer to exacerbate the “would-be harms.”
The court finally noted that even if the Mother had successfully argued a defense to return, the Court would have exercised its discretion to nonetheless return the child. The child is ordered returned to Mexico.
