A 14-year-old Mexican girl who was taken by authorities and sent screaming to live in the United States was returned home after DNA tests showed she is not the daughter of the Houston woman who claimed her.
The case of Alondra Luna Nunez drew international attention after a video of the distraught girl being forced into a police vehicle last week circulated in media and on social networks.
The Foreign Ministry said Mexican officials were carrying out a court order to send Alondra to Dorotea Garcia, a Houston woman who claimed the girl was her daughter who had been illegally taken to Mexico by her father years ago. Alondra's family insisted authorities were mistaken but their pleas were ignored.
"They stole my daughter," Susana Nunez told Milenio Television yesterday. "I didn't know this woman existed."
But Garcia, speaking to a Houston television station, said the first time she saw the girl, "I saw my daughter." She gave few details about how she ended up leaving Mexico with the girl, although she said she knows many won't look kindly on her actions.
"The people who know me don't need me to give an explanation for what happened," she said later to The Associated Press. "Whatever explanation I give won't change the minds of people in Mexico or here."
Mexican agents assigned to Interpol took Alondra from her middle school in the central state of Guanajuato on April 16 and transported her to a courtroom in the neighboring state of Michoacan, according to a statement from the federal Attorney General's Office.
In court, Alondra's parents and Garcia each presented birth certificates and gave testimony, then the judge ruled in favor of Garcia, ordering the girl into her custody, according to the court in Michoacan. A court official, who was not authorised to speak to the press, said on condition of anonymity that Alondra's parents didn't present proper documents.
Alondra, upon returning to Mexico, said she asked for a DNA test and the judge turned her down.
The judge who ruled on the case said it wasn't within her duties to order a DNA test.
"We as judges are only responsible to resolve the case with respect to recovering the minor," Judge Cinthia Elodia Mercado told the AP. "We don't do investigations or make inquiries".
