Cardenas

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

Father and mother were married in June 2008 in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico. Father is a Mexican-born citizen of the United States; mother is a citizen of Mexico and has a permit allowing her to work in the United States. Although we include this information for the sake of clarity, we note that “[t]he spirit of the Convention is to minimize nationality or citizenship as a factor in determining whether a child should be returned to one country or remain in another[, . . . and] courts should abstain from allowing considerations of citizenship or nationality to affect determinations of habitual residence.” (J. Garbolino, International Child Custody Cases: Handling Hague Convention Cases in U.S. Courts (3d ed. 2000) § 4.4, p. 94.)

2 After their marriage, the parties lived together in Sutter County for about six months. Mother, pregnant with Leosandro, returned to Mexico and Leosandro was born there in May 2009. Leosandro was both registered as a Mexican citizen living in Mazatlan and as the child of an American born abroad. For the first 10 months of his life, Leosandro lived with both parents in Mazatlan. The three then moved together to Woodland, California,…