Mexican Cartels Recruiting Women for Smuggling Jobs

Venezuelan and Nicaraguan migrants are transferred by agents of the Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande river from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico to El Paso, TX, on Dec. 27, 2022, to ask for political asylum. (Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images)

Mexican cartels are recruiting women to help smuggle humans and drugs across the Texas border because women often get away without jail time.

Over the last two years, at least 140 females have gotten away “scot-free” after being caught smuggling, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said on Tuesday in an interview on NewsNation. According to Coe, at least 15 to 20 percent of the smugglers caught are women.

Kinney County is near the Texas-Mexico border, about 35 miles southeast of Del Rio. The rural county encompasses 1,365 square miles and is home to about 3,600 residents.

Coe said the cartels have caught on that many small rural counties along the Texas border do not have the facilities to house women inmates, leading to an uptick in female recruitment.

But the county has begun making changes to how it processes female smugglers.

“We’re managing to find a place for the ones that really need to go to jail,” Coe said. We’re starting where we do an actual P.R. [personal recognizance] bond on them. In other words, if they don’t show for their hearing, we’re gonna charge them $5,000.”

This month, the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) together have arrested and released at least 20 females on P.R. bonds for border-related crimes, NewsNation reported.

Some of the alleged smugglers get caught again while awaiting their court dates.

“We picked up one earlier this month—she was picked up in Webb County for smuggling. She had 16 counts against her there,” the sheriff told NewsNation. “We caught her in Kinney County with five or six … But now she’s not the first one, won’t be the last one.”

Alleged Smuggler Flirts With DPS Trooper

On April 12, DPS Lt. Christopher Olivarez arrested a “female driver for smuggling 2 female immigrants” in Jim Hogg County, about 260 miles south of Kinney County, Olivarez wrote on Twitter. The social media post included a video of the incident.

Lidia Elizabeth Badillo, 38, was arrested for allegedly smuggling two illegal female immigrants from El Salvador in her Chevrolet Malibu sedan.

Badillo, a Mexican national who lives in Edinburg, Texas, told the trooper the women were her friends and that they were going out for drinks.

The woman attempted flirting with Olivarez when he told her to wait while he ran their licenses.

“I’m looking at your eyes,” Badillo told him.

“You look pretty handsome,” she responded.

Badillo later admitted to picking up the women from a stash house in Mission, Texas, according to DPS.

“The two smuggled female illegal immigrants were provided with fraudulent driver’s licenses in an attempt to get through the #USBP [U.S. Border Patrol] inspection station at Falfurrias,” Olivarez wrote on Twitter.

Olivarez also wrote that Badillo is a member of LUPE, an organization founded by labor rights activists César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, according to the group’s website.

The organization has more than 8,000 members. Its objectives include using “the power of civic engagement for social change, from fighting deportations, to providing social services and English classes,” the website states.

Badillo faces two counts of human smuggling—a third-degree felony in Texas carrying a penalty of at least two years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.

What Else?

Gov. Greg Abbott named border security on his list of emergency items this legislative session, which ends May 29.

“We need both new strategies as well as greater investment in what we’re currently doing,” Abbott said in a press release in February.

Since 2021, Abbott has taken a number of actions to combat the border crisis, including securing $4 billion in funding for increased border security, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers along the border, designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and signing a law to make it easier to prosecute human smugglers, among others.