MEXICO CITY — A 14-year-old Mexican girl who was taken by authorities and sent screaming to live in the United States was returned home Wednesday as DNA tests showed she is not the daughter of the Houston woman who claimed her.
The case of Alondra Luna Nunez drew international attention because a video of the distraught girl being forced into a police vehicle last week circulated in media and on social networks. There was no immediate explanation of why authorities did not confirm her identity before sending her out of the country.
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 and had been illegally taken to Mexico by her father. Alondra's family insisted authorities were mistaken, but their pleas were ignored.
“They stole my daughter,” Susana Nunez told Milenio Television. “I didn't know this woman existed.”
With a court order from a judge in Texas, 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.
