Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers apprehended Mexican national Roman Ibarra Rojo in Del Rio, Texas, on Friday as part of a scheme to smuggle a five-year-old girl across the Mexican border into the U.S.

The Texas DPS received reports that border surveillance captured a man on camera carrying a child across the Rio Grande.

DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez believed that the girl was loaded into a vehicle and driven to a hotel by a smuggler shortly after she crossed the border, before she was transferred to Rojo and he was apprehended.

The girl was loaded into a Dodge pickup truck driven by Rojo, and the DPS monitored the vehicle.

Lt. Olivarez told Fox News that the DPS eventually pulled the truck over and discovered that the girl with Rojo had been smuggled in from Mexico. They matched her with the girl recorded on border surveillance.

DPS officers found the girl’s mother, Dolores Lopez, a Mexican national and temporary North Carolina resident, in the truck with her and Rojo.

Lopez confessed to DPS officers that she had found a smuggling gang online and paid them $8,000 to smuggle her daughter across the border.

Rojo allegedly confessed to accepting $1,000 for his role in the smuggling operation.

He was arrested and charged with smuggling a minor.

The DPS also found that he had previously been arrested in 2022 for smuggling, but they did not specify whether he had entered the U.S. legally.

Troopers handed Lopez and the child over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, recommending that the mother be charged with child endangerment.

Olivarez did not specify what, if anything, was done to determine whether the girl was truly Lopez’s daughter.

He also did not mention whether law enforcement is pursuing the other people involved in the smuggling operation.