Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers arrested a man near the border in Del Rio, Texas, on Friday for his alleged involvement in smuggling a 5-year-old girl into the United States from Mexico.
Texas DPS said a trooper stopped a Dodge pickup truck in Del Rio after receiving information that a man had been caught by border control carrying a child across the Rio Grande River.
Lt. Chris Olivarez, a Texas DPS spokesman, told Fox News that the 5-year-old girl who was transported across the border was loaded into another getaway vehicle and taken to a hotel.
The forces monitored the pickup truck until they finally stopped the truck and stopped traffic.
During the stop, troopers learned that the 5-year-old girl was from Mexico and had just been smuggled into the United States.
The trooper also matched the girl's image in the surveillance footage to the girl in the pickup truck.
While asking the girl questions in Spanish, he pointed to the child's bow, which was also shown in the recorded footage.
The girl's mother, Dolores Lopez, was also in the truck at the time of the traffic stop.
Texas DPS said the mother is a temporary resident of North Carolina and is originally from Mexico.
Lopez told troopers that she found a smuggling organization online and agreed to smuggle her daughter to the United States for $8,000.
Eventually, the forces arrested the smuggler, who was identified as Roman Ibarra Rojo from Mexico. Rojo was charged with trafficking a person under the age of 18.
Texas DPS said Rojo admitted he would get $1,000 to smuggle the 5-year-old girl into the United States.
Rojo was previously arrested in 2022 on smuggling charges, Olivarez said.
Lopez and her daughter were referred to the US Border Patrol with a recommendation that the mother be charged with endangering her child.
It will be up to the prosecutor to decide whether to prosecute the mother.
