Mistaken identity girl returns home

When a woman in Texas claimed that Alondra Luna Nunez was her long-lost daughter, the girl’s real parents in Mexico say they presented more than a dozen documents from baptismal records and a copy of her birth certificate to family photographs. 

They were sure it was enough to demonstrate her true origins.

In the end, they say, Alondra was sent screaming to the US based on a scar on the bridge of her nose resulting from a remote-control car mishap as a young girl. And they blame their traumatic week-long separation squarely on the judge who made the final call.

“The other girl had a scar, but on the eyebrow, and I have one on my nose. I mean all this was stirred up over that,” said Alondra, 14, at an emotional reunion with family after nearly a week away. “The judge said: ‘No, it’s her,’ and that was that.”

DNA testing proved Alondra was not Houston resident Dorotea Garcia’s daughter.

The case 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.

Judge Cinthia Elodia Mercado said that it was her obligation to make sure that international child-abduction conventions were followed.

“Our only job is to resolve whether the child needs to be returned or not,” she said.

However, the resulting drama touched not only Alondra’s family in Mexico but also Garcia, who believed that she had finally found her daughter, Alondra Diaz Garcia, taken from the US illegally by her father nearly a decade ago.

That girl’s whereabouts are unknown, and a warrant remains for the father, Reynaldo Diaz, who is suspected of abducting her from Houston in 2007.

Garcia, speaking to a Houston television station, said the first time she saw Alondra Luna: “I saw my daughter.”

She gave few details about how she ended up leaving Mexico with the girl, although she said she knows many will not look kindly on her actions.

Garcia travelled to Mexico this year and said she had found her daughter in Guanajuato, prompting US authorities to seek Interpol’s help in retrieving her. She did not elaborate how.

Many things remained unclear, including who called Interpol from the US.

On April 16, Mexican agents assigned to Interpol took Alondra from her middle school and transported her to a courtroom in the neighbouring state of Michoacan, according to a statement from the federal Attorney General’s Office.

Alondra’s parents and Garcia each presented documents and gave testimony, then the judge ruled in favour of Garcia, ordering the girl into her custody.