Alondra Luna Nunez: 14-year-old Mexican girl is reunited with family after DNA test proves she is not the daughter of Texan woman

Footage of police taking the girl has drawn international attention

Alondra was taken from her home town of Guanajuato in central Mexico (YouTube)

A 14-year-old Mexican girl who was seized by officials and sent to live in the US has returned home after DNA tests proved she was not related to a Texas woman who claimed to be her mother.

International attention was drawn to the case when footage emerged of Alondra Luna Nunez being forcibly taken from her school in Guanajuato, central Mexico.

Mexico’s foreign ministry claimed that officials were carrying out a court order to send Alondra to Houston, where Dorotea Garcia claimed that the girl was her daughter and had been illegally taken by her father.

Alondra’s family attempted to tell the authorities that there had been a mistake, but was ignored.

At a barbecue to celebrate the girl’s safe return her mother, Susana Nunez, said: “It's terrible that they could do this do you.”

Alondra said: “At first I was very upset because I had never been so far away from my parents.”

But she was confident the mistake would be rectified: “So after a while I calmed down a bit,” she added.

Alondra was taken from her school by agents assigned to Interpol on 16 April. She was transported to a court in a neighbouring state, where her parents presented her birth certificate and testified.

Despite this, the judge ruled in favour of Ms Garcia and Alondra was transferred into her custody. A court official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the girl’s parents did not present proper documents.

After Alondra arrived in Houston she posted a video in which she stated: “I'm fine. I see that the United States is nice. I don't understand anything they're saying, because everything is in English.”

She later claimed that she was only saying this to reassure her family back in Mexico.

As a result of the video, the foreign ministry intervened to request a DNA test, which revealed that Alondra was not Ms Garcia’s daughter.

The mix-up dates back to 2007, when Mexico’s foreign ministry was notified by Ms Garcia that her daughter, Alondra Diaz Garcia, had been taken by her father and they were both believed to be in Mexico.

Ms Garcia travelled to the country the same year and claimed she had found her daughter in Guanajuato, which led to US authorities enlisting the help of Interpol to retrieve her.

Despite the spotlight on this case, Ms Garcia’s actual daughter, Alondra Diaz Garcia, is still missing.

AP