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Mexico opens probe after girl wrongly sent to US

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Mexican prosecutors opened an investigation Friday into the case of a 14-year-old girl who was wrongly sent to the United States to be with a woman who thought she was her daughter.

Alondra Luna Nuñez was mistakenly flown to Texas on April 16 after a judge in the western state of Michoacan ruled in favor of a Houston woman who believed Luna was her daughter.

Luna was returned to her parents in the central state of Guanajuato on Wednesday after DNA tests proved that it was a case of mistaken identity.

The case captivated Mexico after a video went viral online showing Luna screaming as police officers forcibly took her out of her school and shoved her into their patrol car.

The Michoacan state prosecutor’s office said in a statement it was investigating actions that involved the judge and which probably “violate the child’s best interests and could constitute as illegal acts.”

The National Human Rights Commission has launched its own investigation, which its president Luis Raul Gonzalez said would seek to ensure that there is “no impunity” in the case.

After landing home on Wednesday, Luna seemed to hold no grudge, saying she hoped the Texas woman, Dorotea Garcia, ended up finding her daughter. They spoke by phone.

“She told me to forgive her for everything she had done to us,” Luna told reporters.

Garcia thought Luna was her daughter because the two share a similar scar between their eyebrows.

The case dates back to 2007, when Mexican authorities received Garcia’s request for help to return her daughter, whose father brought her to the country from the United States.

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