Garcia had documented her experience in the school, in the San Elizario Independent School District, and posted the video on YouTube.
Garcia could be seen in the video wearing a yellow Marvel hoodie, a black disposable face mask, jeans, a backpack, and high-top sneakers.
"Do I look like a seventh-grader?" she asked. "No? Cool. Awesome."
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Garcia said no one noticed she wasn't her daughter until the seventh class period, at the end of the school day.
"I've been here all day, face-to-face with teachers," she said in the video as she ate lunch.
Garcia posted a follow-up video saying her motivation for posing as her daughter to spend a day at school was to explore school safety.
"I was nervous the entire time," she said.
Garcia said she'd come into contact with the principal, several faculty members, and security guards at the front of the school when she entered at the beginning of the day. She said that no one, including almost all the teachers in the classes she attended, realized she wasn't her daughter.
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She said that before she got caught at the end of the day, the only trouble she'd gotten into was for having her phone out.
"The school was so concerned that my phone was out that they weren't even paying attention to who I was," she said.
Garcia said her intention was to keep the name of the school out of her story.
"This is about our children and the safety of our children," she said. "That's all I'm trying to do is prevent another mass shooting."
Garcia did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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As of May 28, there had been at least 225 mass shootings in the US in 2021. In March, experts told Insider that school shootings were likely to increase as more students got back into classrooms after a period of remote learning. But they said that threat-assessment trainings and stricter gun laws could help prevent the shootings.
A third video showed Garcia's encounter with the police on Friday. Officers could be heard telling her she was being arrested in connection with a traffic warrant.
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