EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – It was early Monday afternoon when a female traveler applied for entry into the U.S. at the walk-through lanes of the Paso del Norte port of entry in El Paso.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer by the last name of Padilla inspected her documents and asked her destination. The woman identified herself as Ema Lee Bliss and said she was returning to Roswell, New Mexico, about 200 miles northeast of El Paso.
It was then that Padilla noticed facial bruises on the woman and asked what happened to her. According to documents filed this week in federal court, Bliss told the officer she was involved in a car accident, resulting in a broken nose and two black eyes.
The officer moved on with his line of questioning and asked Bliss the purpose of her travel to Mexico, and how she planned to get back to New Mexico. The woman said she was in Mexico visiting a friend she has known for 10 years but grew nervous explaining she was getting a shared ride to Sierra Blanca, Texas, and then someone would drive her to Roswell; the hand that held her cellphone began shaking, according to court records.
CBP sent the woman to a secondary inspection area, where a canine officer named Luisa alerted her handler to the presence of drugs; female officers conducted a body search and pulled out a black bundle from Bliss’ vaginal cavity, court records show. The bundle contained a quarter-pound of blue pills that tested positive for fentanyl.
Homeland Security Investigation agents read Bliss her rights and she allegedly agreed to speak without a lawyer. When asked how much she was getting paid to smuggle drugs, the woman said she wasn’t. She allegedly told HSI agents she had been beaten by a man named Miguel two days prior and was threatened into smuggling the drugs from Mexico.
The agents inspected Bliss’ cellphone and allegedly found a conversation with an unknown party. One of her messages stated she “could only fit certain amount and would have to leave the other behind”; one of his messages was if she was “safe now and if (she) has those things in her,” a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas shows.
Eddy County, New Mexico, jail records show a woman named Ema Lee Bliss, 22, being arrested and released last October on state charges of aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon, larceny over $500, and conspiracy to commit burglary of an automobile. (Roswell is located in Chaves County, which borders Eddy County to the south and east.)
The HSI agents pressed Bliss and urged her “to be truthful.” Court records show the woman asked for a lawyer and the interview was terminated.
Based on the information available, federal officials referred Bliss for prosecution under Title 21 U.S. Code 952, knowingly and intentionally importing a controlled substance into the United States. The case was filed before U.S. Magistrate Judge Leon Schydlower in El Paso.
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