United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 23-3407 ASLI BAZ, Petitioner-Appellee, v. ANTHONY PATTERSON, Respondent-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:23-cv-05017 — Jorge L. Alonso, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED APRIL 11, 2024 — DECIDED APRIL 30, 2024 ____________________

Before WOOD, HAMILTON, and LEE, Circuit Judges. WOOD, Circuit Judge. Asli Baz, a citizen of Germany, filed this suit under the International Child Abduction Remedies Act, Pub. L. No. 100-300, 102 Stat. 437 (“ICARA”), seeking to compel Anthony Patterson, a citizen of the United States, to return their six-year-old son, A.P., from Illinois to Germany. ICARA implements the Hague Convention on the Civil As- pects of International Child Abduction, T.I.A.S., No. 11,670, 1343 U.N.T.S. 89 (Oct. 25, 1980) (“the Convention”), an 2 No. 23-3407 international treaty to which both the United States and Ger- many are parties. The statute “entitles a person whose child has been wrongfully [retained in] the United States in viola- tion of the [] Convention to sue the wrongdoer in federal court for the return of the child” to the child’s habitual residence. Altamiranda Vale v. Avila, 538 F.3d 581, 583 (7th Cir. 2008) (cit- ing 22 U.S.C. § 9003(b)). 1 The district court found that A.P.’s habitual residence at the time he was retained was in Germany, where he had lived with Baz for over a year, and that the retention in Illinois vio- lated Baz’s rights of custody under German law. It thus granted Baz’s petition and ordered the child’s return. We stayed the district court’s return order while Patterson ap- pealed the judgment. In his appeal, Patterson challenges both the jurisdiction of the district court and its rulings on the mer- its of the petition. We conclude that the district court properly exercised the jurisdiction granted to it by ICARA and that the record supports its decision. We therefore affirm. I In 2013, Baz was living in the United Kingdom and Patter- son resided in Florida. The two met while Baz was visiting Miami, and they soon struck up a relationship. Two years later, Baz moved to Chicago on a student visa to pursue a doc- toral degree in clinical psychology. Patterson accompanied her, they moved into a house together, and their son, A.P., was born in May 2017. Although Baz and Patterson ended their relationship shortly after A.P.’s birth, they continued to

1 In 2014, the codified legislation was transferred from Title 42 of the United States Code to Title 22. Our references here are to the 2018 edition of the Code. No. 23-3407 3 occupy the same house, though on different floors, pursuant to an order from the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois (“Illinois state court”). In November 2017, Patterson commit- ted a domestic battery against Baz, for which he was charged, convicted, and sentenced to eighteen months of conditional discharge. He has fully served that sentence. Over the next few years, Baz and Patterson continued to rely on the Illinois state court to resolve issues relating to A.P.’s custody and placement. On August 5, 2019, Baz sought and received the court’s permission to relocate with A.P. to Wisconsin for her pre-doctoral internship. In September 2020, Baz again requested permission to relocate with A.P., this time to Minnesota so that she could complete a mandatory pre-doctoral fellowship in forensic psychology. The Illinois state court granted this request, too, and Baz comple