Photos by Deanna Dent A child plays along the wall of Casa de Elizabeth orphanage in Mexico, where three American siblings have been living since their mother abandoned them. click here for more photos/videos of this story

The Mejia siblings live each day in a Mexican orphanage, wondering if their mother will ever return for them. But unlike the other orphans, the Mejia children have another wish: to get back to Arizona. After all, they’re American.

IMURIS, Mexico —  More than one year ago, Lourdes Garcia walked out of her home, a sad heap of plywood and tin set upon a crumbling street in Nogales, Sonora. This is what she left behind:
Rainny Mejia is 9. She’s a ghost of a child, forever observing, rarely participating. Junior Mejia is 8. He’s caught between two worlds, one of silly faces and monkey bars, the other of stark reality and abandonment. Alize Mejia is 5. Every step she takes is a calculated stomp punctuated with a giggle.
That night, as they had so many nights before, the three young ones slept alone. They would wake up the same way.
Today, the siblings live at Casa de Elizabeth, a Mexican orphanage in this dusty Sonoran town south of Nogales.
But they don’t belong here.
All three are U.S. citizens – born in Lake Havasu City and Riverside, California – whose only connection to Mexico is their mother. Still, in the year and a half since they arrived, nothing has been done on either side of the border to return them to the U.S. or to their relatives who cry for them but don’t know how to bring them home. The plight of the Mejia children, though unusual, is not unique.In Mexican border cities like Imuris, orphanages have seen other American children come through their doors. In fact, of five orphanages along the border contacted for this story, representatives at three agreed to talk, and all three say they have housed or currently house American children. The reasons remain unclear, but the overall tension created by illegal immigration seems to be trickling into family matters.
Sometimes relatives in the U.S. don’t know how to get their children back; sometimes no one appears to be looking for them at all. Meanwhile, authorities on both sides of the border provide contradictory information about how such cases are handled.
One Mexican official says he has contacted Arizona’s Child Protective Services when American youths were abandoned south of the border but has gotten little response. U.S. officials say when they hear of such situations, they intervene as quickly as possible.
This fracture in communication can destroy futures, leaving children stranded in one country, citizens of another.

The Mejia siblings lived in this dilapidated house before Mexican authorities picked them up in March 2006.

Left Alone
One thing Rainny remembers about her mother is that she liked to dance. When she woke up on that cold, clear morning in March 2006 to find her mother gone, Rainny imagined that was why. Her mother was out dancing. It wouldn’t be the first time she was late getting home. In the days that followed, the children would remain alone. Rainny would cook for her brother and sister. During better times, her mother had taught her how. Eggs. Beans. Tortillas.
It wasn’t until two days later that Mexican authorities came for the children. They described what they found in a report:
• Three young children sharing a small shelter with roaches
• Soiled clothes tossed about
• Trash covering the concrete floor
• A broken bed
• A refrigerator, empty and filthy
Authorities would make one other note before taking Los Niños Mejia – the three Mejia children – to their new home, Casa de Elizabeth: “According to the neighbors, they are American minors.”
Mexican authorities took four pictures the day they came to collect the Mejia children. In one of the images, the children, caked with dust, stand huddled. Only Rainny dares to look at the camera. Alize stares at her feet, and Junior looks past it all into nothingness.
The photograph was taken at one of the most pivotal moments of the young orphans’ lives. It should have marked a time of hope for them, a rescue from a country they hardly knew, a return to Lake Havasu City, to family and home.
Instead, after the picture was shot, the system failed them, much as their mother had.
Neighbors knew that Rainny, Junior and Alize called the U.S. their home. They told authorities as much. But rather than notify the proper officials, Mexican authorities moved the children into the orphanage.
“We’ve spoken with CPS [in the past],” says Eduardo Chávez, the children’s case manager for Desarrollo Integral de La Familia, the Mexican version of Child Protective Services. “They say they can’t come because [the abandonment] didn’t happen in the U.S.”
So when the children were picked up, as he says often happens, nobody bothered to call the U.S. for what they assumed would be the same response.
When children are abandoned in Mexico, they’ll likely stay in Mexico.
Deborah Nishikida, a program manager for Child Protective Services, says that’s not the case – so long as the U.S. is alerted.
Instances in which children have been abandoned on the wrong side of the border have been a persistent, though somewhat infrequent, occurrence, she says. In her experience, when it does happen, the U.S. is able to work with Mexican authorities to get the children placed in the right country.