Texas Woman Brings Missing Daughter Home From Mexico After 8 Years
— -- A Texas woman and the daughter she searched eight years for are reunited and back home in Houston today after she found the girl in Mexico.
DNA testing proved Alondra Diaz, 13, is the daughter of Dorotea Garcia, a Houston resident, Michoacán, Mexico, state prosecutor's office spokeswoman Magdalena Guzman told ABC News on Friday.
Garcia and Diaz arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on Saturday morning from Guadalajara, Mexico.
"What I had been wishing for so many years. Finally I can touch her. She is with me and I am grateful to God," Garcia said in Spanish after she and her daughter arrived at her suburban Houston home.
Garcia had been looking for Alondra since the girl's father allegedly took her to Mexico in 2007, according to The Associated Press, which reported that her father recently delivered the teen to family members, who presented her to authorities.
Mexican Judge Cinthia Elodia Mercado returned the girl to Garcia Friday, according to the AP, saying, "The recovery of a minor by an applicant mother has happened. This is over."
The judge has not responded to ABC News' request for further comment on the case and the fate of the teen's father is unclear. But Garcia has indicated that she would drop legal complaints against the father if she got custody, the AP reported.
The story was thrown into the spotlight in April because of a case of mistaken identity. That's when a judge ordered another teenage girl, Alondra Luna Nunez, to go to Texas to stay with Garcia before authorities realized she was not Garcia's child.
It is unclear how Garcia directed officials to the wrong girl, who has the same first name as her daughter.
Cellphone videos taken in April by Alondra Luna Nunez's family members, included in the video at the top of this page, show the girl kicking and screaming as authorities took her away from her family in Mexico.
She is back with her family in Mexico, where her family traveled to the Los Reyes courthouse today to demand an apology, the AP said.
"We have been here since 9 a.m. and the judge does not want to see us, nor will she open the door, and she says that if we remain here she will call police to remove us," said Susana Nunez, the girl's mother. "We want to make it clear that my girl's rights were trampled."
Nunez said the family intended to file formal complaints next week but wanted to meet face-to-face with the judge first to express their displeasure, according to the AP.
"I see this as a kidnapping that was ordered by the judge," the girl's father, Gustavo Luna, said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
