A Kenyan woman has moved to a Nairobi court to stop her son from being relocated to the United States by his father. The woman, who in court was identified by the initials TMK is asking the court to grant her the sole custody of her son who is six years old. The son holds both Kenyan and US citizenship.

She argues that she has been living in Kenya since February 2019 and has been caring after the son all along. She says that she has been living with the son and her mother at a home in Nairobi.

TMK moved to the Nairobi court after a court in April ruled that the child’s grandmother who was holding the child should release him to be relocated to New York, USA, where TMK and the child’s father who has been identified by the initials CAD, would ask a US-based court to determine on custody. The child’s father holds US citizenship.

“The applicant has brought this application for [sole custody] in order for her to be able to have actual custody, care, and control of the minor since it has been difficult for the applicant to make decisions concerning the minor without the [child’s father] who has not been taking care of the minor since 2019,” TMK said in her petition to the court against the child’s relocation to US.

In the first case that was heard in a Magistrate’s court, the court had ruled that the child’s grandmother who was identified as MWM had no capacity to be the child’s guardian as the child’s parents were alive. The court then ruled that child be relocated to the US under the guardianship of the directorate of children services and the Inspector General Japheth Koome.

The child’s grandmother then moved to the High Court in protest but the High Court upheld the ruling by the Magistrate’s court.

TMK says in court that she and the baby’s father were in a relationship in the US that did not culminate in marriage. They had the child together who was born in Brooklyn, US. When they broke up, she returned to Kenya with the child.

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She says that she then briefly moved back to the US in 2019 to try and repair her relationship and claims that she was abandoned by the child’s father, which forced her to return to Kenya. She further claims that the child attends school in Nairobi and she can singlehandedly manage to fend for him.