[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 23-12566 ____________________

CARLOS ALBERTO CUENCA FIGUEREDO, Petitioner-Appellant, versus YAURI DEL CARMEN ROJAS,

Respondent-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 3:22-cv-01268-TJC-LLL ____________________

Before JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, and GRANT, Circuit Judges. USCA11 Case: 23-12566 Document: 52-1 Date Filed: 05/01/2024 Page: 2 of 17

2 Opinion of the Court 23-12566

GRANT, Circuit Judge: Eight-year-old C.R. and his parents are all citizens of Venezuela, where C.R. was born and where his father, Carlos Cuenca Figueredo (Cuenca), still lives. C.R.’s mother, Yauri Rojas, took C.R. from Venezuela three years ago without his father’s knowledge or permission and brought him to the United States. She and C.R. have lived in the same apartment near Jacksonville, Florida ever since. Twenty months after Rojas absconded with their only child, Cuenca filed a petition in the Middle District of Florida seeking the return of his son under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The Convention and its implementing legislation generally require the immediate return of a child to his home country when the abandoned parent files a petition for return within one year of the wrongful removal of the child. But because Cuenca filed his petition more than a year after C.R.’s mother took him from Venezuela, the Convention allowed the district court to refuse his petition for return if it found that C.R. was settled in his new home in the United States. The district court did find that C.R. was settled in his new environment—after two years living in the same home, attending the same elementary school, and participating in various extracurricular activities in the same community in Florida—and it denied Cuenca’s petition for C.R.’s return. To resolve Cuenca’s appeal, we must decide whether and how the immigration status of a child and respondent affects child-settlement decisions under USCA11 Case: 23-12566 Document: 52-1 Date Filed: 05/01/2024 Page: 3 of 17

23-12566 Opinion of the Court 3

the Convention. Along the way, we must also clarify our standard of review for the district court’s determination that a child is or is not “settled” within the meaning of the Convention. We conclude that immigration status is one factor among many that may be relevant when assessing the relative stability and permanence of the child’s connections to his new home. As with any other relevant factor, the weight assigned to immigration status will vary according to the child’s individual circumstances. And because identifying and weighing all the relevant factors to determine whether a child is settled in his new home is essentially a factfinding exercise, we review the district court’s determination on this issue only for clear error. The district court here correctly identified C.R. and his mother’s immigration