Mexico police seize wrong girl for forced return to U.S.
MEXICO CITY --A 14-year-old Mexican girl pulled screaming from her middle school by federal police and sent to a woman in Houston was being returned home Wednesday after DNA tests showed she is not the woman's daughter, Mexico's Foreign Ministry said.
Last week's removal of Alondra Luna captured national attention after a video was circulated by media and on social networks of the girl screaming as she resisted federal police who seized her in the central state of Guanajuato.
The Foreign Ministry said the police were carrying out an order from a judge to send the girl to Dorotea Garcia, who claimed the girl had been illegally taken to Mexico by her father years ago. Alondra's family insisted that authorities had taken the wrong girl and said their efforts to prove her identity were ignored.
"They stole my daughter," Susana Nunez said Wednesday to Milenio Television. "I didn't know this woman existed."
The girl was flown to Houston, where she recorded a video, posted to social media, in which she looked calm and happy and told her parents in Mexico not to worry. "I'm fine. I see that the United States is nice," she said, adding, "I don't understand anything they're saying, because everything is in English."
She was put on a flight back to Mexico on Wednesday after a DNA test conducted at the Mexican Consul's office proved she is not Garcia's daughter.
The Foreign Ministry said it first received a request in 2007 to return the girl, who had been taken by her father from the U.S. and, according to the information, was in the western state of Michoacan. This year, Garcia came to Mexico and said she had identified her daughter in Guanajuato, a state neighboring Michoacan, prompting U.S. authorities to seek the help of Interpol to bring her to the United States.