Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers arrested a man on Friday near the border in Del Rio, Texas, on suspicion of smuggling a 5-year-old girl into the United States from Mexico.
Texas State Police said troopers stopped a Dodge pickup truck in Del Rio after receiving information that border patrol had caught a man crossing the Rio Grande with his child.
Lt. Chris Olivares, a Texas DPS spokesman, told Fox News that the 5-year-old girl who was brought across the border was placed in another smuggler's vehicle and driven to a hotel.
Officers observed the pickup truck and eventually stopped the truck and conducted a traffic stop.
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A 5-year-old girl was seen being transported across the U.S.-Mexico border near Texas before being loaded into a truck by another smuggler and driven away, the Texas State Police Department said. (Texas DPS)
During the stop, officers learned that the 5-year-old girl was from Mexico and had just been smuggled into the United States. Officers also matched an image of the girl seen in the surveillance footage with an image of the girl in the pickup truck.
While questioning the girl in Spanish, he noted that the boy was bowing his head, which was also seen on the video recording.
The girl's mother, Dolores Lopez, was also in the truck at the time of the traffic stop.
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Mexican suspect Roman Ibarra Rojo has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling a 5-year-old child across the border. (Texas DPS)
The mother is a temporary resident of North Carolina and is originally from Mexico, according to Texas DPS.
Lopez told officers that she found a smuggling ring on the Internet and agreed to smuggle her daughter into the United States for $8,000.
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A 5-year-old girl was smuggled into the United States from Mexico after her mother paid $8,000 to a group she found online. (Texas DPS)
Police eventually arrested the smuggler, who turned out to be Roman Ibarra Rojo from Mexico. Rojo was charged with smuggling a person under 18.
Police in Texas said Rojo confessed that he intended to receive $1,000 for smuggling a 5-year-old girl into the United States.
Olivares said Rojo was previously arrested on smuggling charges in 2022.
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Lopez and her daughter were referred to the U.S. Border Patrol, who recommended that the mother be charged with child endangerment. It will be up to the district attorney's discretion whether to prosecute the mother.
