The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied an emergency application to stay a Fifth Circuit decision that would allow an asylum-seeker's 7-year-old daughter to be deported to Venezuela.

In a brief order, the justices vacated a temporary stay of the Fifth Circuit ruling, which Justice Samuel Alito granted on Oct. 2, the day after Samantha Estefania Francisco Castro filed her emergency application at the high court.

While their asylum applications remain pending, Castro and her daughter have both been granted temporary protected status and work authorization, according to Castro's emergency application.

Castro had argued that the Fifth Circuit used the wrong standard of review when it overturned a district court judge's ruling that her daughter was "well-settled" in Dallas, Texas. She urged the justices to not have her daughter returned to Venezuela at the request of her father, who has lived in Spain since 2021.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have granted the application, according to the order.

Castro and her daughter, identified as A.F., have lived in Dallas with Castro's current husband, who also has temporary protected status and a pending asylum application, since they came to the U.S. from Venezuela in November 2021.

In April 2023, A.F.'s father, Jose Leonardo Brito Guevara, filed a petition in Texas federal court to have his daughter returned to Venezuela under the Hague Convention.

In those proceedings, the district court concluded that it was no longer in A.F.'s best interests to be returned to Venezuela since she was "well settled" in Dallas and had minimal connections to that country and no memory of living there.

After Brito appealed, a Fifth Circuit panel took a new look at the facts of the case rather than reviewing the lower court's decision for clear legal error.

In a split opinion, the appellate court held that A.F. was not "well settled" in Texas and was too young to form the type of enduring attachments necessary to override the Hague Convention's default return remedy, with extended family in Venezuela.

In a response to Castro's emergency filing at the Supreme Court, Brito called the application "another attempt to delay the return of" A.F. to Venezuela.

Brito said both parents, he and Castro, have testified under oath that they will return to Venezuela if A.F. is ordered returned to their home country.

And Castro is unlikely to succeed in her forthcoming petition for certiorari, Brito argued.

In her emergency application, Castro said the justices were likely to grant her forthcoming cert petition because the Fifth Circuit decision deepened a circuit split and contravened the high court's 2020 decision in Monasky v. Taglieri , which held that a child's habitual residence was a task for fact-finding courts and something that should be judged on appeal under a deferential clear error review standard.

But Brito argued that Monasky doesn't apply because determining if a child is well settled under the Hague Convention is a legal question, not a factual inquiry like habitual residence.

Brito said the Fifth Circuit grappled at length with the proper standard of review, and correctly determined that de novo review of legal questions at play in the district court was appropriate.

Counsel for the parties did not immediately return requests for comment.

Castro is represented by Roger C. Diseker, Joakim Soederbaum and Tracy L. McCreight of Duane Morris LLP and Brett D. Solberg, Jacob I. Chefitz and Michael E. Keramidas of DLA Piper.

Brito is represented by Jonathan Hermann and Emily A. Fitzgerald of Alston & Bird LLP.

The case is Samantha Estefania Francisco Castro v. Jose Leonardo Brito Guevara, case number 25A376, in the Supreme Court of the United States.