Two Marines were arrested in California for helping to smuggle unauthorized immigrants across the southern border into California.

Officials said Tuesday that Border Patrol agents arrested the two California-based Marines on July 3 for their role in the smuggling operation. Marine Lance Cpls. Byron Law II and David Salazar-Quintero from California's Camp Pendleton were taken into custody and charged with committing "transportation of certain aliens for financial gain."

The federal complaint states that the Marines transported three immigrants over the border near Tecate, California.

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Two Border Patrol agents were on duty in the Boulevard Border Patrol Station when one agent noticed a black car pull onto a dirt turnaround on Interstate 8 around 10 a.m. local time. The agents had been tracking footprints they believed belonged to people who had come across the border illegally and believed the car was there to pick them up.

The car quickly pulled back onto the interstate and an agent identified as C. Anderson alerted other agents in the area. Another agent, identified as E. Pepe, saw the car and pulled it over about seven miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Pepe conducted an "immigration inspection" of the five people in the car, the federal complaint states.

Law was driving the car while Salazar-Quintero was in the front passenger seat. They both told the agent they were citizens. Three individuals were in the backseat and told the agent they were citizens of Mexico without any immigration documents that would allow them to enter or remain in the U.S. legally.

All five individuals were placed under arrest at 10:17 a.m. local time.

Law and Salazar-Quintero each blame the other for getting him into the situation. According to the complaint, Law stated that Salazar-Quintero called and asked him if he was willing to make $1,000 for "picking up an illegal alien." On July 2 the men traveled to Jacumba Hot Springs, California, guided by cellphone instructions from an unknown Mexican number and picked up one man and transported him to Del Mar, California. The next day they picked up the three more people in the car when Border Patrol agents stopped them.

Salazar-Quintero claims that "he was originally introduced to smuggling by Law, who introduced him to a man that recruited him."

Law claims they were never paid.