Two individuals, including a government-contracted employee, were arrested on Friday after allegedly trying to smuggle 39 migrants past the Falfurrias checkpoint on a charter bus, according to a federal criminal complaint. 

Nancy Fernandez Luna and Juan Torres Ayala made their initial appearance in federal court on Monday in connection with the alleged smuggling attempt.

According to the criminal complaint, Ayala was the driver of the charter bus owned by the McAllen-based company All Valley Charters. 

The complaint identified Luna as a government contract employee for MVM, a government contract transport company.

At the Falfurrias checkpoint, Luna told Border Patrol agents she worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was escorting COVID-positive undocumented juveniles, the criminal complaint stated.

While inspecting the charter bus, Border Patrol agents contacted the Centralized Processing Center, who said they had no transport buses in operation at the time. The complaint also noted that the undocumented migrants on the bus were not juveniles.

Ayala provided a statement saying he was being paid $1,800 to illegally transport the migrants.

Channel 5 News reached out to All Valley Charter for comment. A representative for the company said the bus had been rented by a church on the day of the alleged smuggling attempt. 

“We were told the trip was to take church members to a church conference out of town,” the company stated in an email, adding that Ayala is a contract bus driver, and not a company employee. 

“He was contracted as part of the rental agreement with the church,” the company said.

Luna and Ayala are due back in federal court on Tuesday morning for a detention hearing, court records indicate.