Click to watch video

Bitter custody battles have some parents running for the border.

Parental abductions happen more often than you might think, and Mexico is a favorite hiding place.

Greg Allen treasures his memories.

“She looks so young,” he said.

The moments captured on home video are some of the last images the Texas father has of his daughter Sabrina.

She disappeared four years ago with is ex-wife.

“She took Sabrina on a weekend visit and took her across the border and has been missing ever since,” Allen said.

“Mexico is an easy out for them,” Phillip Klein said. “It’s very close.”

Klein sees it all the time; he’s a private investigator in Texas who specializes in parental abductions:

“She went across in Nuevo Laredo,” he said. “We know that. We have pictures of them going across.”

Most of his cases, like Allen’s, involve parents who defy custody orders by crossing the border.

“There are resort communities down there; there are a lot of English-speaking people down there,” Klein said. “They can blend into the community.”

The growing number of Americans living in Mexico makes it an attractive hiding place for parents on the run.

According to U.S. officials, there are more than 200 such cases.

This father’s search would take him from Austin deep into Mexico.

Allen followed the trail across the border, and it led to Mexico City. While he waited, Mexican authorities moved in, but just as they were about to take his ex-wife and little girl into custody they disappeared again.

“We have had numerous spottings of them,” Klein said.

Klein is convinced an underground network is helping parents like Sabrina’s mother elude capture.

“I also believe she is very well funded,” Klein said.

But he’s confident he will bring Dara Allen to justice.

“There are guys out there like me as scruffy as we look, that will get out there and we will hunt you down and find you,” he said.

He’s tracked down several parents, including another Texas mother who was hiding in Mexico with her child.

Suzanne Dewalt went to prison for seven months for kidnapping. Jeremy is back home in New Braunfels with his father.

“These are several different age progression photos that they’ve done,” Allen said.

That gives Allen hope even as he struggles with the knowledge his little girl is growing up without him.

“That’s her right there in the back,” Allen said.

The fleeting image is of Sabrina at a school performance in Mexico City. Her blonde hair has been dyed black.

A teacher who tipped off authorities gave Allen the video after his ex-wife slipped away with Sabrina again.