EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A Mexican woman says she received new clothes and a few hundred dollars for accompanying a man on cross-border drug runs from Chihuahua, Mexico, to various cities in Texas.
Michelle Chavira Romero was one of two individuals arrested last Saturday at the Ysleta Port of Entry in El Paso in a Nissan Juke carrying a combined 58 pounds of crystal meth and cocaine in hidden compartments.
According to a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in El Paso, Chavira and Omar Antonio Gasson Zamora showed up at the border and aroused suspicion when they gave a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer different answers as to where they were going.
Court documents show Gasson, the driver, stated he was going to Chicago, while the woman had an I-94 immigration form showing Odessa, Texas, as her destination. The CBP officer sent the vehicle and its occupants to a secondary inspection area.
A K-9 officer alerted CBP handlers to the presence of drugs and an X-ray inspection of the car showed anomalies in the floorboard, the complaint states.
CBP officers dug into the floorboards and retrieved 30 cellophane-wrapped bundles of a crystal-like substance. Another eight bundles wrapped in brown tape held a white, powdery substance. A field test revealed 36.8 pounds of methamphetamine in crystal form and 21.6 pounds of cocaine, court documents show.
Homeland Security Investigations agents sat down with Gasson to ask him about the drugs, but he declined to speak to them without a lawyer present, records show. Chavira, however, agreed to cooperate.
In a video-recorded interview, Chavira told HSI agents Gasson hired her to accompany him at the border on the premise that would make him less likely to be questioned too much by CBP, according to the complaint.
Chavira allegedly said she had made two previous drug runs with Gasson from Juarez to the United States, the first one to Lubbock, the second one to Fort Worth, Texas. In Lubbock, she said Gasson bought her $300 worth of clothes and gave her $380 in cash once they returned to Mexico. Court records show that in Fort Worth, Chavira got $400 worth of clothing and received $300 cash in Mexico.
The woman allegedly said this time she was promised a straight-up $1,000 payment, but she thought they were only transporting marijuana, court documents show.
Gasson and Chavira are facing one count each of knowingly and intentionally importing a controlled substance into the United States. Court dates are pending.
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