Mistaken identity: girl pulled screaming from Mexican school and sent to Texas

[umbertino]

• DNA tests prove Alondra Luna Núñez, 14, is not woman’s daughter
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• Dorotea García claimed girl had been taken by her father years ago
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• Luna said she was ‘happy to be home’ after her ordeal

 

 

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City

 

Thursday 23 April 2015 01.59 BST

 

 

 

 

A 14-year-old Mexican girl, who was dragged screaming from her secondary school by federal agents last week and flown to Houston to be with a woman who claimed to be her mother, was repatriated to Mexico on Wednesday.

 

The repatriation of Alondra Luna follows DNA tests showing that she is not the daughter of Dorotea García, who had obtained a judge’s order to get her forcibly brought to Houston.

 

“We are all very happy,” Luna’s mother Susana Núñez told Milenio TV, adding that she had received a phone call at dawn telling her that her daughter would be on the first flight home today.

 

“They stole my daughter,” Núñez said.

 

The moment when federal agents seized Alondra in the central city of Guanajuato last Thursday was captured in a shocking video in which the girl is seen screaming and struggling as she is forced into a waiting vehicle. Núñez said she had never heard of García’s claim on her daughter until then.

 

In the video, Luna can be seen struggling with police as they pull her out of the school and bundle her into the back seat of a vehicle. She screams: “I am not your daughter,” at a woman already sitting in the car, presumably García, who later gets out.

 

Luna also calls for her father, who appears to be filming the scene. A man’s voice, presumably his, tries to calm her. “Daughter, we are going to do something else,” he says.

 

According to a statement released by the Mexican foreign ministry on Wednesday, the order to seize Luna stemmed from a trip García made to Mexico this year in which she identified the girl as the daughter she had lost when her father, Reynaldo Díaz, kidnapped her in 2007.

 

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 would not 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.”

 

Luna’s father, Gustavo Luna, told Grupo Imagen that the mistaken identity appeared to hinge on the fact that both girls share the name Alondra, and that he had met Díaz, who was his sister’s brother-in-law, several times when in Houston over a decade ago.

 

The case has raised questions about the protocols used in such cases, and why DNA tests were not performed on Luna before she was taken to Houston. Her father also stressed that Luna suffers from a disability that limits her control of one side of her body that should have made it immediately obvious that she was not García’s daughter, even without blood tests.

 

A statement released by the Mexican attorney general’s office on Monday, before the results of the tests were known, appeared to rule out a case of mistaken identity despite the fact that the parents had been vocally questioning the operation and had organised a blockade of a motorway outside Guanajuato accompanied by fellow pupils at their daughter’s school.

 

“The girl, who had been taken illegally from her family, was claimed by one of her parents who resides in the United States,” the statement had said.

 

The statement said Luna’s father was present during the operation to take her to Houston that it insisted was carried out in accordance with international conventions and had at all times “protected the physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing of the girl”.

 

The judge who ruled on the case said it was not within her duties to have ordered a DNA test before the girl was taken across the border. “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.”

 

Luna and Garcia went by bus to Houston, crossing at Laredo, Texas, with the birth certificate of Garcia’s daughter and the court order, according to the foreign ministry. The ministry later intervened to request the DNA test because of the commotion the video was causing.

 

Local media reported that Luna arrived in Guanajuato airport on a flight from Dallas at around 11am on Wednesday, and was immediately taken for a medical exam after which she was expected to go home with her parents.

 

She later spoke to reporters in her hometown of Guanajuato, saying she was happy to be home.

 

“She took me from my parents,” Luna said. “I didn’t know her or Mr. Reynaldo,” she added, referring to the father of Garcia’s missing daughter.

 

Luna’s uncle, Ruben Nunez, said that she returned in good condition and that the family is sure to seek some kind of legal damages.

 

“In whatever form, they will try to sue whoever is found to be responsible,” Nunez told reporters in the airport in Leon, Mexico, after the girl’s arrival. “It’s not right what they did, take the girl just because they could.”

 

Meanwhile, Alondra Diaz Garcia remains missing. Reynaldo Diaz is suspected of abducting her from Houston in 2007, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A felony warrant has been issued for his arrest.

 

 

 

Alondra Luna Nunez, left, after a press conference with her parents Gustavo Luna and Susana Nunez following her return to Mexico. Photograph: Mario Armas/AP

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/22/mistaken-identity-girl-screaming-mexican-school-texas

 

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

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Reverse hobummer amnesty  --- man, THAT sucks, too !