“Es mi bandera,” they chant together. (This is my flag.) “Símbolo de la unidad de nuestros padres y nuestros hermanos.” (Symbol of the unity of our parents and of our sisters and brothers.)
After more than a year, the three children have begun to adjust to this new place. They remember their life before but only vaguely. They played with friends on asphalt streets. They handed out candy hearts on Valentine’s Day. They lived near a lake. They ate chocolate-chip cookie-dough ice cream. They spent time with their mom and dad. They also remember an aunt and a grandma.
They miss them both.

Remembering the Children
Lake Havasu City rests along the Colorado River in western Arizona, about eight hours and a border away from Casa de Elizabeth.
On one of the many suburban streets, just down the road from a Bashas’ grocery store, is a white stucco duplex. Outside, a man and his granddaughter grill carne asada. Both are relatives of the Mejia children. Inside, two women wait: the Mejia children’s great-grandmother, Susana Flores, 67, and their great-aunt, Ana Aheredia, 39.
These are the two the children remember.
Both women share the children’s deep brown eyes and their combination of strength and softness. You can hear it in Flores’ rich, soulful laugh, though she doesn’t laugh much when she talks about her great-grandchildren.
It’s been about two years since these two women have seen los niños Mejia. When the children were growing up in Lake Havasu City, their mother would leave them with her Aunt Ana and Grandma Susana often.
“A couple minutes would turn into hours. A couple hours would turn into days. And days would turn into weeks,” Aheredia remembers. “I would take the kids so many times.”
Aheredia says she never understood it. “Why do you do that to your kids?” she asks. “They’re so beautiful.”
The situation wasn’t always that way. When Lourdes Garcia first met Alex Mejia, the children’s father, more than a decade ago, everything seemed to be going well. He had a full-time job at a plastics shop in Lake Havasu City making good money. They seemed happy together. “I would always say, ‘I’m so proud of you guys. You’re doing so good,’” Aheredia remembers.
Then the couple starting doing drugs and drinking, and the relationship began to fall apart. He beat her. They bounced from home to home, unable to pay the rent.
Eventually the two split, and, as far as Aheredia knows, Alex was deported to his native El Salvador. Garcia, for her part, stuck around Lake Havasu City on a visa until a warrant was issued for her arrest after she missed a court hearing for charges of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
Garcia told Flores and Aheredia that she was going to Nogales, Mexico, to visit her mother. They thought it would be a short visit. She didn’t come back.
It wasn’t until some months ago that the women saw Garcia again. She stared at them from the pages of Lake Havasu’s local paper, Today’s News-Herald. Her black-and-white mugshot was set next to five others. Above the pictures, in big, block letters, were the words “Most Wanted.”
The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office says she is still wanted for a variety of drug-related offenses.
“If you have information on any of the individuals below, DO NOT approach or attempt to apprehend,” the public-service announcement reads. “Please contact the Mohave County Probation Department Absconder Apprehension Unit.”
As far as the two women know, Garcia is still living somewhere in Nogales.