EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A woman from Odessa, Texas, who said she and her boyfriend were about to have sex when a group of migrants got into their parked car is facing felony charges of assault on a federal agent.
A grand jury last week indicted Jackie Nichole Hall and John Christopher Ramirez on a count each of conspiracy and transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain. The jury also charged Hall with a count of resisting, impeding and assaulting an officer of the United States.
The charges stem from a July 7 incident in which U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped a red Kia sedan spotted by surveillance cameras driving close to the Mexican border west of Presidio, Texas, and driving back a short time later.
The area along Farm to Market Road 170 is “one of the most notorious smuggling routes” in the Big Bend area, so border agents decided to conduct an immigration check, according to a complaint affidavit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Five unidentified individuals got out of the Kia as soon as it stopped. But border agents arrested driver Ramirez and his front-seat passenger Hall on suspicion of migrant smuggling. They were taken to the Border Patrol station in Presidio.
Records show Hall consented to an interview with a Homeland Security Investigations agent. The woman was read her rights and allegedly said she and Ramirez drove from Odessa (a 229-mile, 3.5-hour drive) to observe the sunset in the Big Bend of Texas.
“We were going to drive in a little ways and fool around,” court records quote Hall as saying. “We were about to do some of that fooling around (parked on the shoulder of the road) [….] because sometimes people like a little danger.”
Hall allegedly told the agent several people “appeared from nowhere,” opened the doors of the Kia, crammed into the vehicle and ordered Ramirez to “drive!”
The woman said she suspected the uninvited guests were undocumented migrants because only one of them spoke English. Border agents ended the drive to Presidio and the migrants absconded into the wild.
Court records show the HSI agent asked Hall’s consent to examine her cellphone and found recent calls to a contact nicknamed “Boss” in Mexico. The agent asked Hall about “Boss” and she said it was her cousin in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, whom she had not seen in 13 years but recently started talking to again quite frequently.
The complaint affidavit states the agent was still going through the phone when Hall allegedly reached out to wrest the device away and, while doing so, physically assaulted the agent. Federal officials were in the process of taking Hall back to a holding cell when she allegedly hurled a courtesy water bottle at the HSI agent, according to the complaint.
By the time Ramirez was interviewed by HSI he was compliant and allegedly said he and Hall drove to the border to smuggle unauthorized migrants. Ramirez allegedly said this was the fourth time he and Hall drove to Big Bend to pick up individuals who crossed the border illegally to smuggle them past the U.S. Border Patrol highway checkpoint in Alpine, Texas, and deliver them to Odessa.
This time, they were supposed to go through the Marfa, Texas, checkpoint, so they needed to drop off the migrants before going through, let them walk around the security zone, and pick them up later, court records quote him as saying.
Ramirez allegedly pinned the blame on Hall for coordinating the pick-up with a human smuggler in Mexico. He said Hall was paid $2,000 for each migrant reaching his destination and stated, “he personally wasn’t paid” and merely was helping Hall by driving her where she needed to go.
Both are set for arraignment on the conspiracy and smuggling charges on July 25 before U.S. Magistrate Judge David B. Fannin.