Houston resident Dorotea Garcia and 13-year-old Alondra Diaz arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport on Saturday morning from Guadalajara, Mexico.
"I love her, and I am so happy having her here," Garcia said to reporters later in the day.
Diaz, a native-born US citizen, was taken to Mexico in 2007 by her father without her mother's consent and Diaz's whereabouts hadn't been known until recently.
The case gained attention last month after a judge in Mexico erroneously ruled that 14-year-old Alondra Luna was the missing girl and ordered her turned over to Garcia.
Garcia and Diaz held a news conference outside of Garcia's suburban Houston home on Saturday afternoon.
The garage door on the front of the house had been decorated with balloons and signs that said in Spanish, "Welcome Alondra" and "We love you very much, Alondra."
When asked what it means to have her daughter back, Garcia replied, "No more gray days."
Throughout the news conference, mother and daughter hugged each other, and Garcia became emotional several times.
When asked about returning home to the United States to live with her mother, Alondra said in Spanish, "I want to learn many things about the United States, about my family."
"I can touch her now," she said in Spanish.
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