• 22
  • January
    2012

A federal judge ruled that a 5-year-old girl must return to Mexico to live with her mother instead of remaining in Queens, New York, with her father.

According to court documents, the child custody battle began after the couple's plot to illegally enter the United States fell apart. The girl's father entered the United States as an illegal immigrant shortly after the girl was born in 2006, court records show. He made a home for himself in Queens and found a job as a custodian at a private school.

In 2010, the man's wife planned to join him in New York with the girl. He paid smugglers to take his daughter across the U.S.-Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona.

His wife was supposed to join them a few days later. However, federal agents caught her in the process of attempting to cross the border and deported her back to Mexico in August 2010.

According to the father, the couple agreed the girl would have a better life if she stayed with him in New York. Eventually, he found a new girlfriend, had a baby with her and stopped sending money to his wife in Mexico.

The mother claimed in court she would not have sent the girl to live with her father if she had known she would not be joining them. So, she sought legal means to have the girl returned to her. She filed a child custody lawsuit under the Hague Convention's Child Abduction Remedies Act.

The judge based his ruling on the law, and specifically said it did not address whether the girl's father is the better parent. He said Mexico is the girl's permanent residence and her father is free to return there if he wants.

Source: The New York Daily News "Judge in immigrant custody battle orders 5yo girl returned to mom in Mexico; 'illegal' dad stays in Queens with new girlfriend," John Marzulli, Jan. 9, 2012.