Mission, Texas — On Wednesday, April 12, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers stopped a gold Chevrolet Malibu on FM 1017 in Jim Hogg County. During the traffic stop, troopers say they discovered the driver, 38-year-old Lidia Elizabeth Badillo, a Mexican national living in Edinburg, was smuggling two women. In video taken of the traffic stop, Badillo told the trooper she was going out to get drinks. She then started flirting with the trooper, telling him he was handsome. DPS said Badillo later admitted to troopers that she picked up the women at a stash house in Mission and was attempting to drive them through the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint.
DPS said both passengers in the Chevrolet Malibu were migrants from El Salvador and in the country illegally. The migrants gave fake Texas driver’s licenses to the trooper in hopes of making it through the checkpoint. Badillo told the trooper that once she got beyond the checkpoint, she was planning to meet another driver, who was going to drive the two women to Corpus Christi, Texas. According to Texas DPS, the smuggling method used by Badillo is used to smuggle female immigrants into the U.S., where some of the women are forced into debt bondage and work off the debt through forced labor and sex trafficking. Badillo is charged with human smuggling and the two illegal immigrants were referred to the U.S. Border Patrol.
News by Breaking911
