EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A man is facing federal felony charges after allegedly trying to drive a car with 38.5 pounds of cocaine through an El Paso port of entry.
Christopher Herman Barrio was arrested last Wednesday at the Paso del Norte International Bridge shortly after a Customs and Border Protection officer interviewing him for admission into the U.S. noticed he was avoiding eye contact and increasingly tightening his grip on the vehicle’s steering wheel.
The officer sent the gray Acura MDX with Texas license plates carrying Barrio, a woman and three children to a secondary inspection area. There, officers detected fresh paint in the Acura’s undercarriage.
Officers located a trap door under the rear seats of the vehicle, opened it and pulled 15 bundles of a white powdery substance, according to a complaint affidavit filed last Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Each bundle weighed just over a kilo and the substance they held was later determined to be cocaine.
Court documents show Barrio, who was in possession of a Texas identification card, agreed to be interviewed by members of a Homeland Security Investigations drug task force. He allegedly said members of a criminal organization in Juarez, Mexico, had paid him $1,500 to smuggle drugs into the United States, and that he had been paid before for successfully smuggling a smaller quantify of drugs and delivering it to the parking lot of a store in El Paso.
Barrio told HSI agents he was working for La Linea drug cartel, according to a federal arrest affidavit submitted to U.S. Magistrate Judge Miguel Angel Torres.
A detention hearing is scheduled for Jan. 29, 2025, is U.S. District Court in El Paso.
In fiscal year 2024, CBP’s Office of Field Operations seized 1,561 pounds of cocaine in the El Paso area of responsibility, along with 378 pounds of fentanyl and a whopping 4,538 pounds (2.27 tons) of methamphetamine. The latter represents a 50% increase in meth seizures over fiscal year 2023.
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