Smuggler carrying five-year-old girl across the southern border caught by authorities

DEL RIO, TX - On Friday, December 6th, troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) arrested a man for allegedly smuggling a five-year-old girl across the southern border.

According to Fox News, Texas DPS said that a trooper stopped a Dodge pickup truck in Del Rio after receiving information that a man was captured by border surveillance carrying a child across the Rio Grande. Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesperson for Texas DPS said that the five-year-old girl was carried across the U.S.-Mexico border and loaded into another smuggler's vehicle. The driver then drove the girl to a hotel.

Troopers continued to watch the pickup truck until they eventually pulled it over and conducted a traffic stop. During the traffic stop, troopers learned that the five-year-old girl was from Mexico and had just been smuggled into the United States. The trooper successfully matched the image of the girl in the surveillance footage to the girl in the pickup truck.

While asking the girl questions in Spanish, the trooper pointed out the young girl's bow, which had also been seen in the surveillance footage. At the time of the traffic stop, the girl's mother, Dolores Lopez, was also in the truck. 

According to Texas DPS, the mother is a temporary resident of North Carolina and is originally from Mexico. Lopez told the trooper that she located a smuggling organization on the internet and agreed to pay $8,000 to illegally bring her daughter into the United States.

Troopers arrested the smuggler, who has been identified as Roman Ibarra Rojo from Mexico. Rojo has been charged with smuggling a person younger than 18-years-old. Rojo reportedly confessed that he was going to be paid $1,000 to smuggle the five-year-old girl into the country. Olivarez said that Rojo was previously arrested in 2022 for smuggling.

Lopez and her five-year-old daughter were referred to the U.S. Border Patrol with the recommendation of charging the mother with endangering her child. However, it will be up to the district attorney to decide whether to prosecute the mother. 

In Hidalgo, Texas, DPS troopers detained a man who was attempting to smuggle three adults and a child from Guatemala into the United States. According to CNYCentral, DPS drone captured a raft coming across the Rio Grande from Mexico dropping off a group of four. A vehicle, driven by Javier Alexander Osorio Ruiz picked up the group in an attempt to smuggle them further into the U.S.

The failed attempt resulted in Ruiz leaving behind the group in the brush where the child received numerous thorns from a cacti. Troopers stopped Ruiz, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, and took him into custody. He was placed under arrest and charged federally for human smuggling by the U.S. Border Patrol. The mother of the child stated that a family member in California paid a smuggling organization to get them across the border to California.