Mexican girl returns home after mistakenly sent to US

Alondra Luna Nunez smiles after attending a press conference upon her arrival to the Guanajuato International Airport in Silao, Mexico, Wednesday, April 22, 2015. The 14-year-old Mexican girl, who was taken from her school by police and sent kicking and screaming to the U.S., returned home after DNA tests showed she is not related to an American woman searching for her missing daughter. AP

SILAO, Mexico – A 14-year-old Mexican girl returned to her home country Wednesday, a week after police forcibly grabbed her at school and sent her to the United States in a mistaken custody battle.

A video of the April 16 operation shows Alondra Luna Nunez screaming as officers shove her inside a police vehicle in the central state of Guanajuato before flying her to a woman in Texas who thought she was her daughter.

The images spread on social media and captivated Mexico.

But Luna was finally back with her real parents on Wednesday after a DNA test proved on Monday that she was not the daughter of the woman in Texas.

Legal action

“Ask me all the questions you want tomorrow. Right now I want to be with my parents,” Luna told reporters at the Guanajuato airport.

Her parents, visibly emotional, did not rule out taking legal action against the officials and judge who ordered police to take Luna and fly her to Texas.

“Right now, what I want is to speak with my daughter,” her father Gustavo Luna told reporters. “I think that all the authorities involved in this were wrong.”

The foreign ministry said in a statement that the case dates back to 2007, when Mexican authorities received a request for the return of a minor whose father brought her to the country from the United States.

8-year search

In March this year, US authorities told Mexican counterparts that the mother of the child had traveled to Guanajuato and had identified the girl as her daughter after an eight-year search.

A Mexican judge subsequently asked the international police organization, Interpol, for assistant to get the girl, the ministry said.

But the DNA test showed that the woman who asked for the girl’s return was not her mother.

The foreign ministry stressed that it was “just acting as a facilitator” at the start of the judicial proceedings and coordinated the collaboration between US and Mexican authorities in the return of minors.