The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 13 allowed a federal appeals court ruling to take effect in an international custody dispute involving a young girl in Texas.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit requires that the girl be sent back to Venezuela, her native country.
The case concerns A.F., a 7-year-old girl who lives in Dallas, Texas, with her mother.
A.F. was born in Venezuela in 2018, but has not lived there since she was 3 years old.
The applicant, A.F.’s mother, Samantha Estefania Francisco Castro, filed an emergency application with the nation’s highest court on Oct. 1 to block the circuit court ruling.
The respondent, A.F.’s father, is Jose Leonardo Brito Guevara.
Justice Samuel Alito had acted alone in issuing an order on Oct. 2 staying the ruling until further notice.
On Nov. 13, the full Supreme Court rescinded Alito’s order, allowing the Fifth Circuit’s decision to take effect. The high court did not explain its ruling.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated they would have granted the application seeking to block the Fifth Circuit decision. They did not explain why.
When A.F. was 3, Brito relocated to Spain, leaving A.F. and Castro behind in Venezuela. Some months later, A.F. and Castro came to the United States and sought asylum.
Both were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Their asylum applications are still pending.
TPS is a designation that allows individuals from countries affected by armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary events to remain in the United States. The designation allows the federal government to establish a path to citizenship for qualifying immigrants who cannot return home safely.
Brito continues to reside in Spain.
In April 2023, he asked a federal district court under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction to require that A.F. be returned to Venezuela, the application said.
Because Brito’s petition under the treaty was filed more than one year after Castro and A.F. departed from Venezuela, the treaty allowed the district court to deny the petition if Castro could demonstrate that “the child is now settled in its new environment.”
The district court made such a finding after a two-day trial.
The district court determined that under the Fifth Circuit’s seven-factor test, A.F. was “well settled in her new environment in Texas” and that “it is no longer in the best interests of A.F. to return to Venezuela, where she has minimal connections and no memories of living there,” the application said.
However, a divided Fifth Circuit reversed that ruling and found that A.F. was “not well-settled in her new environment.”
The circuit court directed the district court to enter an order requiring A.F. to return to Venezuela.
The Fifth Circuit’s ruling should be reviewed by the Supreme Court because there is a split among the federal circuit courts on what the standard of review should be when determining whether a child is “well settled” under the Hague Convention, the application said.
Brito’s attorneys said in a reply brief on Oct. 16 that Castro’s application was “yet another attempt to delay the return of her daughter, A.F., to her home country of Venezuela, from where Castro wrongfully removed her.”
In 2021, Brito informed Castro that he intended to travel to Spain, a country in which he holds dual citizenship, for a higher-paying job that would let him send money back to his mother, who was taking care of A.F., according to the brief.
Brito told Castro he wasn’t planning to move permanently, the brief said.
“While Brito was in Spain, and without his prior knowledge or consent, Castro absconded with A.F., taking her from the only home she had ever known,” the brief said.
“She unlawfully crossed the border with A.F. into the United States in November 2021.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Castro’s attorney, Roger Diseker of Duane Morris in Fort Worth, Texas, and Brito’s attorney, Jonathan Hermann of Alston and Bird in Atlanta, Georgia, but no replies were received by publication time.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Nov. 14, 2025, in The Epoch Times.