A TEENAGER in Mexico is due to be reunited with her mother in the United States after DNA tests confirmed her identity.
The tests showed Alondra Diaz Garcia, 13, was the daughter of a woman in Texas who has been searching for her.
She was taken to Mexico by her father eight years ago after a US court awarded custody to the mother.
Last month, another Mexican girl was mistaken for Alondra and taken against her will to Dorotea Garcia in the US.
On Monday, Alondra appeared in a court in the western state of Michoacan along with her aunt and grandmother.
The girl told local media that she had been “happy with my Dad, but at the same time I felt there was something missing”.
“I have missed my mother’s affection because I have not seen her for so long,” she said.
Her relatives said her father had decided to hand her over after he saw coverage of the confusion over Alondra Luna Nunez in the media. Last month a video showing 14-year-old girl Alondra Luna Nunez in distress as she was seized by police and dragged away from her school caused outrage after it was published on social media.
Ms Garcia had mistaken her for her daughter because the two girls share the same first name, are of a similar age and bear a similar scar.
Alondra Luna Nunez was sent to Houston, where Ms Garcia lives, even though the girl and her family insisted all along there had been a mistake.
“The other girl had a scar, but on the eyebrow, and I have one on my nose,” Alondra Luna Nunez told the Associated Press.
“I mean, all this was stirred up over that.”
A local judge in Mexico had refused to carry out a DNA test before sending her to the US, saying that was not within the court’s remit.
DNA tests carried out in Houston eventually revealed Alondra Luna Nunez was not Ms Garcia’s daughter.
The girl was flown back to Mexico, where she was reunited with her parents.
