Hispanic father struggles to get his 2-year-old son out of Ukraine

Russia concentrated soldiers on the border with Ukraine when a desperate Cesar Quintana showed up at the US embassy in kyiv in December to beg it to issue a passport to his young son, who had been kidnapped by his Ukrainian-American mother a year earlier.

Quintana obtained a document from the US courts indicating that he had custody of two-year-old Alexander. They gave him his passport, he bought plane tickets and a few days later he headed to the airport to return to the United States. But he was unable to board the flight.

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The boy’s Ukrainian grandmother had obtained an order for the boy to be handed over to her, which the Ukrainian police enforced.

Now, three months later, Ukraine is devastated by war. And Mariupol, where Alexander’s mother and grandmother live, is besieged by the Russians. Quintana, back in the United States, is unable to communicate with his ex-wife and is so desperate that he considers going back to the Ukraine to look for his son. “I am willing to do anything”he told the Associated Press. “I want to bring my son.”

Quintana, 35, says he last spoke to Alexander on FaceTime on March 2. He claims that he sent money to his ex-wife, Antonina Aslanova, but that he never heard from them again.

Russian bombing cut off communications with Mariupol. Tens of thousands of residents have fled the city and an unknown number of dead.

The AP tried unsuccessfully to contact Aslanova. LinkedIn messages and emails went unanswered. She does not currently have an attorney handling the child custody dispute in California and the phone number she gave in the United States did not work. She was left a message on another phone in her name.

Andrew Klausner, a lawyer who represented her in the past, when he unsuccessfully sought an order from a judge so that Quintana could not approach her, said that Aslanova had left the country and had no contact with her since the end of 2020. .

Quintana created a website about her case and traveled to Washington this week to seek help from a lawmaker and ask Ukrainian diplomats for permission to return to their country.

The State Department declined to discuss the matter, but on February 15, it wrote a letter to California Rep. Lou Correa saying that when Quintana tried to bring her son back to the United States in December, she did not have the consent of the boy’s mother or the go-ahead from the Ukrainian authorities handling the custody case there.

“While the parent who remained in the United States may have custody or visitation rights to the child in the United States, that order may not be valid in the country where the child is located.”, wrote April Conway, head of the unit in charge of children’s affairs at the State Department.

The cases of parents who dispute the possession of a child from different countries are very complicated and activists say that rarely does a minor who is taken by one of the parents to another country return to the country in which he lived. In the case of Quintana, the situation is even more complex because the US embassy in kyiv is closed.

Many of the details of Alexander’s case are contained in a September letter from Orange County District Attorney Tamara Jacobs to Ukrainian officials. According to that letter, Alexander was kidnapped in December 2020, when Quintana and Aslanova were divorcing. Quintana was given custody of the child after Aslanova was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Quintana said he authorized Aslanova to visit the boy at his home while he recovered from gallbladder surgery. She related that one day he fell asleep and that when he woke up in the afternoon, she and Alexander were gone.

Quintana called the police because Aslanova could not remove the child from the house by court order. The next day they informed him that both had boarded a plane to Ukraine, with a stopover in Turkey, according to the prosecution, which accused Aslanova of kidnapping a minor.

In March 2021, a judge ordered that Alexander should return to the United States. That same month, Aslanova informed the court that she was prosecuting her for her arrest for drunk driving that she did not intend to return.

Quintana, meanwhile, obtained a visa and traveled to Ukraine, where he hired a lawyer. He said that he had been in contact with Aslanova, had supported her financially, and that in Ukraine she was allowed to visit Alexander.

Quintana said she tried to convince Aslanova to allow her to take the boy to California and for her to come back to resolve her legal situation. She added that in November she finally agreed and told him that her mother, who was taking care of the child, would take Alexander to her hotel in Mariupol.

As soon as he met the boy, they left by car for kyiv. Quintana said he was stopped twice by police during a 14-hour drive. The authorities confirmed that he was his father and allowed him to continue, but kept their US passports.

In kyiv, Quintana went to the US embassy to get new passports. He said embassy officials asked for more than temporary custody of Alexander to issue him a passport, so he wrote to a California family court. He was worried about a possible Russian invasion.

“If there was an (invasion), neither Alexander nor I would be safe and US airline flights to Ukraine would be suspended for an indefinite period”Quintana wrote. The order he sought was issued and Alexander was given a passport.

Father and son spent Christmas together and planned to return to the United States before the new year. Quintana says that he spoke to Aslanova on the phone and that she asked him not to leave her behind.

The boy’s grandmother, Quintana said, did not want the boy to leave and reported him to the Mariupol police. Quintana said that she presented herself with the police at the kyiv airport. Police showed her a document in Ukrainian — a language he does not understand — and threatened to arrest him if she did not hand over the child, according to Quintana. The little boy got very nervous and he decided to give him to his grandmother to calm him down.

Quintana turned over a copy of the document given to him by the Ukrainian police to the AP, which had it translated. The document said that Quintana took the boy from the Mariupol hotel in late November without the mother’s permission, and called for an investigation to determine whether Quintana was actually authorized to take the boy.

The Ukrainian lawyer told Quintana that the document was a pretext to prevent him from leaving the country.

Quintana said that he remained in Ukraine until the end of January, when his visa expired, and that he returned to the United States because his permit to stay was not renewed.

The Russian invasion complicates everything. Quintana’s Ukrainian lawyer is now in the army, fighting the Russians.

Quintana plans to buy a plane ticket to Poland next week and could try to enter Ukraine from there.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to at least be close by in case an opportunity arises to get him out of the country.”he stated.

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Source: Elcomercio

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