Retired ICE Agent | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller

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Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today. let your taste decide 25 years i served in the agency your use of force in all the training and all the real world operations that i was involved in minimal amount of force necessary to complete the law enforcement objective if that's an arrest if that's a clearing of a building whatever it may be and that force can escalate and de-escalate at a moment's notice just because you escalate you don't stay there you know maybe the person's like oh shit i'm good i'm good bring it back down and what i see here is there's no it's just straight to the top my guest today is eric balier a retired special agent who spent 25 years with the department of homeland security arresting dozens of human traffickers smugglers and child predators He led the wiretap strategy that led to the arrest of El Chapo, not once, but twice. He won multiple law enforcement awards and was even named the Federal Law Enforcement Association's Agent of the Year. I'm excited to have him on today to talk about some of the crazy operations he was involved in. He's actually sitting right in front of me. I'm excited to talk about our mutual friend El Chapo and your thoughts on Trump's immigration raids. Eric Ballier, welcome to The Hidden Third. Thank you very much for having me. Tell me a little bit about growing up and how that led to law enforcement. Yeah. I grew up in a suburb of Syracuse, New York called Baldinsville. Lived on a dead-end street in a white colonial house. My dad was an accountant. My mom was a registered nurse. I have a younger sister. It was really like the epitome of middle-class America. I candidly I was not the best student I loved being outdoors I loved getting in into trouble ish um my neighbor across the street was a deputy with the Onondaga County Sheriff's Department and somewhere in my high school days I did a ride along with him and he had a bomb dog and I just thought it was the coolest thing he would you know he would take me out traffic stops calls all that sort of stuff. And I was just like, yeah, this is cold. I'm not sitting behind a desk. I'm not in a mundane nine-to-five job. I was still in high school, so I needed to still figure some life decisions out at that point. That's so interesting. So do you think that if that neighbor didn't exist, you wouldn't have ended up in my office or something? I think he was a catalyst to the decision. I think ultimately I would have arrived at the same decision. it just put the seed planted the seed early in uh you know I was probably 15 16 years old at the time just planted that seed early that that was something that really interested me and then you went to college and then I went to college and then you left college were you a good student in college I was not a good student also either um no I I grew up in a very conservative household cold, curfews, no drinking, that sort of stuff. When I went to college, my freshman year, the wheels, the wheels came off. There was no, there was no, there was no oversight. There was no like people checking in and stuff and made some dumb, dumb decisions early. I ended up. Tell me about the dumb decisions. Everything from, you know, staying up all hours, not taking class seriously. I took the minimum credits needed to stay enrolled as a full-time student. I remember living in the dorms my freshman year, you couldn't have like a keg or any sort of like multi-preverage container. So we tried to smuggle one in, got caught by the campus security guards. They had us take it down to the residential director's office, put it there pending a disciplinary review board. You know, being the 19-year-old resourceful guy I was, we picked the lock, stole it back, knew that they would come looking in our room. So we went to our buddy's rooms across the hall and, yeah, had a rager party. My mom got the letter from the university saying I was being kicked out of the dorms on Mother's Day after my freshman year. So nothing like felony stupid but like just some dumbass. You were just drinking and partying. Yeah, I did not take – the first three years of my college career, I didn't take seriously. Did you think – were you – did you have a career path in mind at this time? Were you ambitious at all? Did you think that who cares what happens after this? It just seems so far down the line. When you're a freshman, sophomore, 18, 19 years old, like graduation and career choices and stuff like that seemed so far down the line. And I was not thinking strategically. I was in the immediacy, like the here and now, like where's the party tonight? What are we going to do to have fun? What are we going to do to like do some dumb shit and get in trouble? And I didn't think of anything past like what was right in front of my face. Did you have fun? I had a blast. Yeah, it was awesome. But at some point you have to grow up. Yeah. And my senior year I interned with the New York State Police. and that that's when i really started getting serious um it was a year-long program it was divided up between like patrol admin cid and criminal investigative division and then like some of their specialty units bomb squads canines stuff like that and like at that point was when i was like yeah this is this is what i want to do and then was it hard to then get in i had some explaining to do from the previous two years. I didn't get a record. Not record. Yeah, just like the dumb stuff, right? And they run two academy classes a year, and those are usually filled. So I still had a, at this point, graduation is coming quick, and I need a job. So I started applying to different departments. I wanted to get out of upstate New York and kind of just see the country in different places. So I actually tested with the U.S. Border Patrol, of all places, and they offered me a job in Nogales, Arizona in the spring of 99. Oh, so you actually never worked for the state police. You interned with them. I interned with them. But you didn't actually get a job. Correct. Yeah. And so you started in Border Patrol. This was what year? Before 9-11, right? This was, yeah, 99. Summer of 99. Okay. And what was that like, your first arriving in Nogales? I've been to Nogales many times, by the way. mostly the other side of the border actually in mexico but i've also spent time in nogales arizona oh yeah it was awesome so growing up in upstate new york you got the high the greenery the water the humidity all of that stuff and i remember stepping off the plane in tucson in july of 99 like it was a convection oven and i was like where the hell am i like there's no water you just see this like brownish reddish raucous rock landscape there's mountains in the distance there's saguaro cactus and all that sort of stuff. And I remember the first time driving down Interstate 19 from Tucson to the border. It's about an hour drive. Like, it's measured in kilometers. And it just seemed very foreign to me. Like, my upbringing and where I lived a very sheltered life, and all of a sudden here I am, you know, on the U.S.-Mexico border. And as you come over one of the hills on I-19, you can see in the backdrop, like, this black line that kind of snakes across the horizon, and that was the border fence back then. And then so you arrived. It's beautiful. It is. Yeah. It's a beautiful part of the world. Yep, absolutely. And so you arrived, and then did you have to go through training? We did. So we spent maybe like three days in Nogales, and then we flew out to Charleston, South Carolina, which is where, at the time, the Border Patrol had their satellite facility. So we were on an old naval base in North Charleston for about six months from July until we graduated like right before Christmas of 99. Yeah. And what were some of the first things, first operations you were involved? At the academy? No, after. Oh, so coming out, it was like I was full of piss and vinegar. And it was like, all right, let's get after. Like I was 22. I'm like, I want to get into some stuff. Full of fish and vinegar? That means just like full of adrenaline. Yeah, I wanted to get out. I wanted to chase drug traffickers and human smugglers and all that sort of stuff. Go after the bad guys. I'll go after the bad guys 100%. And the field training officers were like, pump the brakes for a minute. There's more to it than that. I remember the first human smuggling load. I was with a field training officer named Terry. and we were sitting in his Chevy Tahoe overlooking the stretch of Interstate 19. And he was like, hey, I'm going to take a nap. I want you to keep an eye on this little dirt road that pops out. And if you see any dust trail, wake me up because it's going to be a human smugly loan. So I'm sitting there with the binos like glued and it was probably an hour, maybe an hour and a half. You know, sure as shit, here comes this dust trail. and I kind of nudged him and I'm like, hey, I think there's a truck or something coming out of this little ranch road. So he kind of just stretches very nonchalant. He's like, all right, well, just tell me when you see it, when he hits the frontage road to go north, and that's one of the ways they circumvented the Interstate 19 checkpoint. So I'm looking at the binos and sure enough. The binoculars. The binoculars, yep. Here comes this little tan Chevy S10 and it hits the hard top and starts going north. And he just casually puts it in gear, and we go down the hill from where we were watching, and he gets behind it. And he's like, all right, I want you to look in the bed. And I'm like, okay. And he pulls up alongside, and I look over. You know, the Chevy Tahoe is a little bit higher than the truck, and all I see are feet. I don't see anything else other than, like, feet. And I just remember saying, like, I see a lot of feet, sir. And he's like, all right, I'm going to light it up. And he just said, like, when they bail, grab two. I didn't know what that – I had no idea what he was talking about. Because, you know, on my ride-alongs with my neighbor, everybody stopped. When I was doing all the traffic stops with the New York State police troopers, like, they always stopped. So I'm like, what is he talking about, bail? Yeah. So he turned on the red and blues, and the truck just sped up for maybe 100 yards, found a patch of dirt, and then ditched into the desert. And then the doors opened. People jumped out of the bed. Just people running. How many people were there? It was probably 15, 12 to 15. Mostly men, men and women, kids. Men and women. I don't remember any kids on that one. And I just remember thinking, like, okay, grab two. and he was going to try to find, he was going to get the driver. Right. And then for prosecution purposes, you need at least two material witnesses. So my job was to. Oh, that's why. My job was. So it wasn't about arresting the actual migrants. It was more about getting the witnesses to get the human trafficker behind bars. Okay. So your job was. My job was to get two. I got my two. Terry didn't get the driver. Oh, no. But that's okay. I don't. What happened to those two? Back then, they were taken to the station. they're processed and they back then they had it was called a vr voluntary return so if they were mexican nationals that didn't have any significant criminal history in the states they'd be allowed to essentially voluntarily return to mexico and they would be put on a in a van and taken to the port of entry and allowed to walk back into into mexico do you have any situation where it got dangerous while you were doing some of these operations trying to find some human traffickers So it was like there's always that sense of looking back on it. I don't think you realize it at the time because it's exhilarating. It's fun. It's what I wanted to do, and you kind of don't really understand the danger aspect of it. Not that you get complacent, but it's just a matter of it doesn't enter your mind all that often. Right. until like one day I was turning on the – they have these stadium lights along the border fence, so they illuminate the U.S. side of the fence. And there's kind of the sodium lights that you see in ball stadiums and stuff like that. But at dusk, you've got to start them. And it's right – I mean, I'm talking probably like 10, 15 yards to the fence. And when you're trying to turn on those lights, you're focused on just getting everything lined up and flipping switches and all that sort of stuff. And then all of a sudden you kind of hear like, shh, shh. And you're like, what is that? And it's people from the south side throwing rocks. And at dusk you really can't see them, but you can hear them as they like sail by or they'll hit a car behind you or bounce off the pavement. And that's where it's kind of like, oh, shit. Like, yeah. Does that happen quite often? Happened more times than, yeah, it happened a lot. And did a lot of officers get hurt during those times? I don't remember anybody. So we were shown a lot of videos and we were shown a lot of pictures about, like, what a rock will do to, like, the human body at speed. So we were told and trained, hey, if you're approaching the fence, if you're by yourself in the vicinity of the fence, you need to be cognizant of rockings. And understand, like, if you take a rock to the head, you're going to be incapacitated. You have a gun, you have a radio, you have all these things, and, you know, it's going to be a few minutes before people can get to you. So it was ingrained in us to maintain kind of your situational awareness about everything. Yeah, because you guys weren't going there. You didn't have helmets at the time. It's not like the Asians that we're seeing right now up in the streets of America, right? You guys didn't have helmets. And a baseball hat. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I did a story, I think it was in 2014, actually, about this. I'm sure I know you probably heard and you might even have been somehow investigating this. I'm not sure. But the kid in Mexico, there was a lot of shootings of Border Patrol into Mexico actually killing civilians in Mexico. And there was a kid, you remember? And that was Nogales. And there was a kid who was shot. And he was, I think, like 16 years old or something, had come from a basketball game with his brother. I do remember that. And he was shot by Border Patrol from across the border. He was in Mexico, and he was shot and killed, and we went and interviewed his parents. It was a very sad story, his brother, and what Border Patrol said that the reason why they decided to shoot at these Mexican civilians in Mexico was because they were throwing rocks at them. Yeah, I mean it's a hard thing because like if you get hit or your partner or someone you're working with gets hit with a rock, then if they're incapacitated, you're incapacitated. Like it could kill you. It could obviously seriously injure you. But at the same time, you know, you have to be cognizant of your backdrop. You have to understand. Like a lot of times you don't see who's throwing the rocks, like an actual person. There's either a group of people or like you would just hear or see the rocks coming over the fence. But you guys wouldn't be trying to shoot back. So you would have to have a – so it would be considered a deadly force. So like rocking incidents were – we were trained that that is a deadly force situation. So in that case, you would probably be – But you have to – only the individual can make that. Every situation is different, right? So while I was like, oh, shit, I'm getting rocked, I can't see who's throwing them. I have no like visual target alignment or anything like that. I'm just not going to clack off a couple rounds randomly to essentially disperse whoever's doing it. So there were shootings involving – with rockings. A lot of them were when they had one individual that they could identify that was throwing rocks. And you also got to be cognizant of shooting across international boundaries. And it's a, you know, that area along Nogales is fairly dense from businesses and homes and stuff like that. And, you know, a rifle round or even a handgun round is going to go several hundred yards. Yeah, it's interesting to me that at the time it was such a big story all over. And I, we went and did a story and it was, it didn't look good on Border Patrol at the time. that these agents were indiscriminately killing teenage Mexican kids across the border. And now we're talking about what's happening here in the United States. Full circle. Yeah, full circle. I mean, where they're doing it with American citizens here in America. But we'll get there in a second. Okay, so then – so that would happen quite often that you guys would be – have rocks thrown at you guys from across. It was – it was always typically like in the night, like the swing shift. So as dusk was setting and you were turning on the lights, that's when I remember most of the rocking incidents happening, like right as it was starting to get dark because you can't really – it's hard to see exactly what's happening on the south side. The cameras aren't 100% dependable, so you could hear in your earpiece like, hey, we've got a group south of whatever light you were trying to turn on. But they couldn't really see. So it was always like around that dusk time when stuff got kind of gnarly. How long did you have this job for? I was in the Border Patrol. I left the Border Patrol in September of 2001, so just over two years. And you left. Okay. And during that time, so you were there for two years, and was it mostly Mexican migrants or who were you guys catching? The vast majority were Mexican migrants. There was a portion that were like back then they would call them like OTMs, like other than Mexican. So Central Americans like from Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, places like that. But the vast majority were either family units or single adult males coming from Mexico. Was there ever sort of a violent encounter when you guys – were they ever armed? Was it ever – was there ever like an armed confrontation? Not that I encountered. Not that I encountered. So – Not that I met with you, I mean. Yeah, most of the time they would run. And, you know, you would chase and you would try to apprehend who you could. But there's also that sense of humanity, right? So if you're out in the middle of nowhere, southern Arizona, especially in the summer, and you're pushing 100 degrees, you're making sure you're offering water. If someone fell and broke their ankle or something like that at night, you're calling for medical and stuff like that. I never encountered any sort of violence in the Border Patrol other than the rocks. Were there militias at the time on the border? The militia phenomenon came a little bit later, kind of in like the 2000, maybe 2005, they started showing up. And then definitely between like 2006, 2010. Right. Okay. So then two years spent mainly on the border and then Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security started, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. I don't think most people know how or why the Department of Homeland Security was created. Some of us still wonder. My first day in the Tucson field office was September 10th of 2001. And it had just been created? It hadn't even been created. So it was – my first day was the day before 9-11. Oh, your first day was the day before 9-11. Okay, so you were just special agent within – So it was the Treasury Department at the time. U.S. Customs Service was part of the Treasury Department pre-9-11. So September 10th was my first day. I was supposed to get sworn in. The special agent in charge had something to do or a meeting. And I was going to be in the office all week because my academy class didn't start until the following Monday. So they were like, no, just he'll get you tomorrow. We'll get you sworn in tomorrow. And then it was 9-11. 9-11. Yeah. And what happened after that? I remember going to the office that morning. Actually, I remember I was putting on my tie and it was draped over my neck, and I had the TV on, and you could see the smoke billowing out of the World Trade Tower. And it was obvious like something bad happened. And then the news crew was shot – it was that scene from a helicopter, and then you just see kind of this plane coming across the horizon, and it kind of disappears behind the buildings for a second, and then it hits the second tower. And then at that point, you're like – like you just know life's never going to be the same. And this is before even knowing about the Pentagon and Shanksville and all that sort of stuff. Right. And at that point, I mean you're seeing this and you're realizing the world's going to be different. But you don't even know how different it's going to be for you, right? Right. Because then you suddenly are sort of – were transferred or the department you work with, then the agency you work with then gets sort of put into a new – Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that all, 2001 happens, I heard 9-11 happens. I spent, I flew out to the academy Friday morning, which I think was like 24 hours after the airspace had been opened. I just remember there being like three people on the flight. The flight attendants are crying. It was just super somber. You get to Fletzy and, you know, they've got, they're doing 100% inspections on all vehicles. They have the staggered jersey barriers so people can't ram the gate. And you're just like, what is happening? It's like a war zone. Graduate the academy in early 2002, and then the Homeland Security Act of 2002 is really what created today's Department of Homeland Security. So it took different agencies from primarily the Justice Department and the Treasury Department and combined them into this massive conglomerate that is now DHS. And the idea behind it is because nobody saw or almost no one saw 9-11 coming, and they thought that it was a huge failure of law enforcement and that basically all these agencies weren't talking to each other. So we needed to put some of these agencies that were tasked with protecting the homeland together under this big umbrella, right? So it includes Border Patrol, ICE as we know it nowadays, GSA, FEMA, Secret Services, right? It became sort of mushroom into a gigantic agency. Yes. Or a department, actually, that didn't exist before. Correct. How was it when you were there at the beginning? How did you see that transformation and how did it affect you? It was a mess. Was it? Yeah, it was a complete shit show to the point where – and I understand now looking back the massive restructuring. I think it was probably the largest restructuring in the federal government since World War II. And you're talking about equipment and budgets and personnel, and we had to turn in our phones. I'm going to date myself. We still had pagers in 2002 and kind of the brick cell phones. We had to turn all those in. you were given one cell phone per group that and that was only for duty calls when you were like on duty so this is before you know iphones and and social media and all that sort of stuff so it was like 2002 to 2004 was an absolute disaster no you were condensing the the ins Mass special agents. Which was immigration and nationalization. Nationalization service with custom special agents. They had different systems. They had different, like, emails and group supervisors and chains of command. And even at one point there was a special agent in charge in Phoenix. There was a special agent in charge in Tucson. And now you're dealing – now I'm back dealing with, you know, illegal aliens and things like that. But, like, we didn't have the computer systems or any of the infrastructure to do it. And Border Patrol was like, nope, we're not helping you anymore. Like, you're on your own. And, like, it was – there were a lot of growing pains. Did you think at the time that it was a good idea, though? Because obviously there was no communication within the agencies that, oh, we have to change something here. I think people understood that there was an intelligence failure and agencies did not communicate between the intelligence community agencies. some of the Justice Department agencies and Treasury agencies. I think it was probably done in haste as a reassurance to the American public that the government was doing something to prevent another 9-11. That was really the foundation for why the department was created. You could certainly pick it apart and digest if it made structural and organizational sense to put it together the way that it is today. And a lot of people are asking some questions right now, right? Twenty what? Twenty-three years later? Twenty-three years later. And then is this when the hiring surge started? So, yes. So the hiring surge, the post-9-11 hiring surge really started in the Border Patrol. So the Border Patrol was given a ton of money to secure the southern border, And they were mandated with whatever the congressional mandates were to hire as many whatever the agent numbers that they had to meet. And what that did was it ballooned their ranks. ICE is in its infancy, and we're still trying to work through the merger of customs and INS personnel. And the Border Patrol is just going on a spending spree and a hiring spree. Um, what happens, and I think it's relevant today because what happens when you do that is your standards get lowered, your vetting is not thorough. And even in normal situations, there are going to be people that are hired that are probably a bad fit for the job. But in those, in those mass buildups, it happens much more frequently. So you end up with massive misconduct issues, corruption issues. They actually had to stand up a whole other organization, Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, to deal with the issues that were now plaguing the Border Patrol and the CBP inspectors that you see like at airports and land borders. I mean, and this obviously could not be more relevant to what's happening nowadays. And I think some of the numbers are staggering. I was reading this, and I'm sure you know this, but I don't think most people do. There was an amazing journalist out there called Garrett Grass who's been sort of an expert on this. He's been writing about these issues for a long time. He has an amazing newsletter called Doomsday Scenario that I encourage everybody to subscribe. But he basically, in one of his latest articles, talks about how criminality is so rampant inside the CBP that it has seen one of its agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005. So in the last 20 years, at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested, some multiple times. And this is the crazy, craziest part, is that this crime rate is higher per capita than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Yeah, and it's not – it's also not confined to just CBP. That's – I'm still trying to process that figure you just read because I wrapped up my career with the internal affairs apparatus of ICE, and I couldn't imagine that pace of criminal misconduct by personnel. And these are CBP's own numbers, by the way, because they actually have sort of keep track of those numbers, which is not the case with ICE, which is another agency within Homeland Security, but they don't actually keep track of those numbers. So it is impossible to know exactly what happens with ICE, but there's been – there was a hiring surge with ICE as well. And with what we're seeing – we'll talk about this – but with what we're seeing and how they're responding to these protesters, and it doesn't seem like these are well-trained people who should be doing this kind of job, right? There's a lot of work to do. Yeah. So, okay, we'll get there. Okay. Tell me, these numbers are freaking crazy, and you actually, you worked when you, at one point you were actually involved in the internal investigations, right? Correct. The internal investigations. So you would be looking at some of these crime numbers, right? For the ICE side of the house, yes. I was internal. At ICE. At ICE. Not at CBP. Correct. Okay, so that's great for our conversation. But tell me a little bit how that, so Homeland Security was created. You were sort of moved and became more of a special agent. What was your career path? So when ICE was created, really the focus in southern Arizona kind of between 2002 and 2006-ish was really twofold. It was international drug smuggling and international human smuggling. and kind of the mantra was humans and dope comes north, money and guns go south. So there was also a focus on both cash smuggling and weapons smuggling, leaving the U.S. into New Mexico. So I spent the first three years of my career assigned to DEA and just had a blast. Still friends with a lot of those guys. We did a ton of wire cases by bus where an undercover would buy five, ten kilos of cocaine and you would arrest the trafficker that supplied the coke. And then I started getting – I really wanted to get into more complex criminal investigations. So we did – I was actually introduced to a human source through an AUSA, an assistant U.S. attorney out there who was working with ATF. And this particular individual was intertwined with the Sinaloa cartel. that was controlling the, like the Caborka Sonora Plaza. Yeah, I've been there. Okay, all right. So and there a longstanding history with Caborka going back to like Rafael Carl Quintero and stuff He kind of really the one that founded that group Rafael Caro Quintero by the way was a huge drug lord He was extradited to the U.S. like 80 years old or something. He's out there. He was extradited like two years ago. He was part of the Sinaloa Quintero, but he's one of sort of the OGs of drug trafficking in Mexico. Yeah, and instrumental in the death of DEA's in Kiki Camarena back in 85. And, you know, he was in Mexican prison for a long time and then was let out. And then anyways. Did you consult for Narcos, by the way? I did not. Did you watch it? I did. I love it. I've watched it multiple times. And it's so great. It's so real, right? It is. Yeah. It's really true to what happened. Very similar to what happened. Yeah, go ahead. Very, very solid storyline. Yeah. So there was a family, the Paisoto family, Ignacio, Octavio, and Trinidad were three brothers that kind of came up through Rafael and his brother Miguel. Rafael gets arrested. Miguel gets arrested and extradited, and they turn over the Caborca cartel to these three brothers. And they controlled a lot of the smuggling in southern Arizona. So marijuana, cocaine, there really wasn't large ports of entry because Nogales is its own corridor, and that's controlled by a guy's name is Gio, Sergio Valenzuela. So anyways, that's now. I forget who it was back then. But the Paisoto family controls Caborka, and they just smuggle staggering amounts of marijuana, cocaine through the vast desert basically in southern Arizona. And this human source, arguably the most interesting guy I've ever met, very down to earth, but also real with who he was. Like he was like, I'm a doper and I'm a criminal. And that's me. And we got along for years and we got to do some. So wait, so he was a confidential informant for you? He was. And he was a Mexican guy? He was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he would text me, you know, Christmas time and stuff like that, Merry Christmas. And, you know, Tucson's a small town. Like, I would be out with my wife. We would see him. No way. Yeah, he'd casually come over and, like, bump me a little bit or something like that, just kind of, like, say hello. Oh, my God. Just a really unique individual. Did you meet him? Did you arrest him first, and then he became a confidential? No, so I met him. He had – ATF had a case on him, a minor case for like a weapons charge. And when they were talking to him, he started talking about the Paisoto family and the Caborka corridor and stuff like that. And the AUSA, who I was working with at the time, a guy named Dave, basically said, hey, this dovetails into everything that you're doing in this little town called Arivaca, which is kind of southwest of Tucson. So it was through that introduction that I got introduced to him. And so the idea was that he was going to give you information on the three brothers, on the Cajorca. Yeah, and he did for years. So we actually built Kate. So Octavio was killed in 2004. One of the brothers. One of the brothers by his nephew. And this is where, like, the family tree gets a little complicated. So then Octavio gets killed. Ignacio, who goes by Nacho, takes over. We ended up building a case on Nacho. In 2009, he gets arrested by the Mexicans, and we were planning on submitting the extradition package and all that sort of stuff. And then he gets released again, similar to like an R.C. or Rafael Carl Quintero. Because he was also arrested and then released before he could get the extradition. In a lot of cases, it's because of corruption, by the way. Right, and Nacho was sentenced to 20 years. Oh, wow. So we're like, all right, like. We have time. We have time. And then he gets released. And then he goes back. He's controlling the plaza. And December 26th of 2020, he takes 50 rounds while he's sitting in his. Of 2020 or 2010? 2020 he gets killed. Oh, now. Yeah. Just recently. Like six years ago. Oh, shit. So day after Christmas, 2020, in Caborka, which is a town he controlled, like ran the plaza for um i think he gets hit 52 times his wife and eight month old daughter are in the car his daughter takes around uh in the arm um survives his wife survives he's he's dead and somebody else took over the car so then there's this infighting and this this is kind of when like a lot of the like chapo's been expert you know extradited at this point um there's a lot of infighting between different factions of the Sinaloa cartel, like between the Salazar's and the Paisoto family for control of this pretty lucrative corridor. So they built the Paisoto family, the three brothers that controlled Caboca, but they were working with the Sinaloa cartel. Correct. Were they part of the Sinaloa cartel? They were. So they were very much aligned with, they were Mayo's guys. Oh, they were Mayo's guys. They were Miles guys. Obviously, you know, Chapo had a big play in that. So, yes, they were aligned with both of them. And actually, like, Mayo and Chapo would, when the Beltran-Leva Wars kicked off several years prior, they would send reinforcements in. Caborca was kind of contested territory for a bit. And they would send in reinforcements to make sure, like, you know, BLO didn't come in and take over. Yeah. So for people who don't know, El Mayo was the other head of the Sinaloa cartel. It was El Mayo and El Chapo. They sort of founded the cartel together and have been running it until the extradition of El Chapo, where his sons took over. And then most recently, last year, with El Mayo being brought to the United States to save justice as well, which we can get a little bit into that later. So you were working on this case, and were you ever able to make any arrests of any of the top guys here? Or did this help you get to? So this was like a leg in. What we really did was focus on what they call like the plaza bosses. So the representatives of, like, and it was all factions of the Sinaloa cartel. So essentially like Miles and Bada and Chapo Guzman along that stretch of border in Arizona. So you had like the Sonaita Plaza to the west, the Caborca Plaza, then you have like the Nogales Plaza. And that's all controlled, albeit not always amicably or peacefully, by factions of the Sinaloa cartel. So we ended up – so Nacho gets killed. His neighbor to the west is a guy named – he goes by El Memo. His name is Adelmo Nieblis Gonzalez. He controlled everything from basically like the west desert of Arizona all the way out to Yuma. And we did build a case on him, and we ended up getting him indicted. The Mexicans were able to arrest him, and he was sitting in a, not Altiplano, but another prison outside of Culiacan, and in 2014 escaped through a tunnel. Also. Also through a tunnel. It seems like every single drug lord in Mexico eventually gets arrested and eventually escapes through tunnels. It was what happened with El Chapo also in 2014, 15? He escaped in 15, right? Yeah. I actually went to – we did a story. I want to hear about how you got involved in the El Chapo wiretaps. Let's start there, and then I'll tell you my story, how I ended up chasing El Chapo and seeing a little myself. Okay. Now I'm interested. So that stuff wraps up. Memo escapes. I take a new position back down in Nogales in 2012, which is where I started my career. Nogales, you've been there. It's a very busy and very vibrant border city, right? So there's constant trade and people coming and going back and forth. It was very vibrant back and forth. So 2012, I get back to Nogales, and it's changed a lot. So a lot of those places – some of those places have been burned. The Arizona to Mexico traffic subsided quite a bit. At the time, BlackBerry Messenger was kind of like a chat app that was kind of affixed to the BlackBerry device. So we were all familiar with it. We started legally intercepting wires, like the communications, sometime early 2013. and as we're going through you're seeing all the all the communications about drug trafficking and you were listening to the conversation that you were also seeing the text back and forth so this was only text so there was no there was no voice so like you have to explain to a judge like exactly what you want to intercept and the reasons for it's it's a understandably a very well there's a lot of oversight and checks and balances and i'm assuming also they're not saying cocaine and kill people they're using code words for all this so the crazy thing is they absolutely were so they were not they were not talking in code they were we would intercept pictures of just bales of cocaine and they'd be like hey take care of this guy take care of that guy so and so has got to go like kill yeah kill oh my god that's crazy and in those situations you would actually contact those people we would have to we would have to show yes we and we sent guys to guatemala to a Guatemalan prison to make a notification. Wow. Your guys. Our guys had to go down to a Guatemalan prison to notify a relative of El Chapo that he was going to get killed by El Chapo. Wow. And he didn't believe us. No way. He didn't. Was he killed? He wasn't killed by. So Chapo had his own problems immediately after that. So he's not killed by El Chapo. So he's at a Christmas party in Mexico, gets pissed drunk, and gets into a fight with another relative who ends up shooting and killing him. So he ended up getting killed, just not the way we warned him he was going to be. In those situations, when you're going to go to all this, you're actually putting your own investigation at risk, right, by telling somebody that they can be killed because how would you know this information unless you're tapping into their phones? but I guess that is the humane thing to do. It's the obligation. That's the obligation of U.S. law enforcement. Every wire I've ever done, your prosecutors tell you, hey, if there's a viable threat to life, then we need to do everything we can. Our job is not to allow people to get killed. It's good to know that that's still the goal that you guys have. Okay, so then – and then how did that get you to – is that what eventually got you to El Chapo himself? Partly. So at this point, I mean, just to remind our listeners and viewers that El Chapo was the most wanted man, wasn't he? I believe he was like the second most wanted man behind – at the time, Al-Zawahiri, who was the leader of Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda. That is crazy. What was so – were you so excited? Were you jumping up and down? We were, yes. So there's obviously that sense of like we're on – like this is potentially monumental. Just again, this has been sort of – he had escaped from prison initially. So this was what year? This would have been the end of 2013, fall of 2013. Right. And he had escaped from prison I think the first time was like in 2006 or something. It was – So he had – it was 11 years prior. I think he was on the run 2014, 11 years. So it would have been, yeah, 2003-ish. So the first time he escaped from prison was in 2001. Okay, 2001. So at this point it was 2013, so 12 years. So he'd been on the run for 12 years, and nobody knew or could catch him, right? And so then suddenly you guys have you're a step closer than anyone else out there in finding out exactly where he is and in catching him, right? Absolutely. And so the other crazy thing is like you look at like DEA and FBI in these like New York and L.A., Chicago. Like the agents that were putting this together were like a year out of the academy from HSI and based in Nogales. Oh, wow. So everybody – and I got along great with the Bureau guys and DEA, and they were like, dude, how the hell did you guys end up in this? And we were just kind of like, I don't really know. It just kind of materialized, and now it was, okay, can we capitalize on the – because he's in Mexico. He controls large swaths of Mexico. He has a tremendous amount of counterintelligence and countersurveillance apparatuses that tell him movements of Mexican military units and police and things like that. So, you know, okay, it's great that he's on the other end of the line, but how do you actually get to him? We know what he's saying or what he's writing, but how do we actually know how to get to him? Two completely different things. And how did you? So we actually teamed – so DEA was involved in all this from the beginning, and DEA was basically like, hey, we need to bring Samar in to this, the Mexican Marines. and they had some success in some high-value target operations in Mexico and the Marines were kind of viewed as the capable organization. So I remember being at the embassy in Mexico City and doing all these briefings and plans and stuff like that. And it was still a little bit of like an unsure thing. If we said anything, we'd get compromised. And I wasn't at this particular meeting, But the lead case agent was, and there was an admiral who went by El Lobo. And he basically said, told the guys, like, knock the shit off. Who are you going to? Is this Chapo? And they were like, yeah. And he was like, listen, I want you to understand something. Like, he's been a scourge on my country. The last time we went after him, I lost 12 Marines. Like, got emotional. And he was like, I'll commit to doing this. And at that point, you've got to just take a leap. And to his credit, he did. He would put out kind of almost like misinformation, like, hey, we're going to go to La Paz or we're going to be in Tepolo Bampo, which La Paz is Baja California. Tepolo Bampo is in Sinaloa. And just see what we would intercept about those movements to try to isolate any sort of leaks he had in the organization. Ah, wow. So he was committed. He was. And he wasn't compromised. Correct. A lot of people in Mexico's government are. El Lobo. So this was the wolf. Yep. And I think he recently retired. Yeah. And then how did you guys get to a chapter that first time? So the first time we knew. So you kept giving information. We did. Yeah. And so I was in Arizona. We put a team with DEA and some U.S. Marshals with Samar in Mexico. And we would provide them essentially real-time information. and we knew at that point like chapo didn't have an entourage he didn't have like a 200 man army he wasn't shutting down restaurants and stuff like he had done in the past he was he was trying to keep a low profile and and rolling pretty light but he had a cook he had like kind of a courier that would run errands and stuff like that for him so we we focused on the courier um and there was some communication where he made a comment, the courier made a comment like, hey, I'm going to drop off breakfast early and then I'm going to go someplace else. So the assessment was that he was going to deliver Chapo food. So we were like, alright, now we've got to find him. In the middle of Coulia Con, in the middle of the night. Find the courier. So you're going to know where Chapo was. And they did. They did. They did. And so they were able to locate him on a street. They approached him. He was actually like he didn't fight. He didn't run. He didn't pull a gun. And he broke. He showed him the house. Where he was. Yeah, where he was. Where Chapo was. And then what happened then? They couldn't get through the front door because he had reinforced. So identify the house. Samar and the Marines prep an assault plan. And they don't have some of the more sophisticated breaching tools that U.S. law enforcement and U.S. military have. So they had a makeshift ram and a sledgehammer, which may work fine for the majority of the houses. But this particular house, which was his ex-wife Griselda's, had like a steel-plated door with like a water bladder in between. So as they were just wailing on the door, like it was absorbing all that energy. so created a ton of noise and he escaped right he escaped through the bathtub which we knew about I filmed outside his house we knew they had a bathtub because they got scared a day or two prior and said flatten the bathtub and leave in the jetta right so it was an amazing contraction where the bathtub would go up and he had access to a tunnel and then he went through the sewage tunnels Yeah, the sewer system of Culiacan. The sewer system, yeah, of Culiacan, and went into a car and fled. Yeah, so he gets picked up. He gets taken down to Mazatlan, which is like a two-, three-hour drive straight south. And we didn't know that at the time. So I asked, the guy's name is Jake. I'm like, hey, what are you guys going to do? Like I figured, like, hey, we literally got to the front door, and some things are just out of your control. Like, there's nothing you can do. Like, I. How were you still frustrated? I was. It was, like, devastating to some degree. But I was also, like, incredibly proud because, like, the men and, like, men and women that really were not viewed as, like, the ones that would catch Chapo. Like, they got to the. I remember having a meeting. I'm like, listen, I am so proud of you guys. Like, we got to the front door. Like, nobody else did. We got him on the other end of the phone. And sometimes shit happens. There's nothing you can do about it. That's very sweet. Yeah, it's like a coach's talk. Yeah. A team after they lost, but they tried their everything. And then that same guy, Jack, who actually intervened in a rocking situation from the Border Patrol like 14 years prior. That's how I first met him. Wait, who's Jack again? Sorry, I didn't mean to jump around. So Jack was the one that put the pieces together that Chapo was on the other device. So Jack and I started out in the Border Patrol together, and I actually helped him out of a rocking situation that we talked about earlier. That's how I met him. Oh, that's how you met. Yeah. The rock situation. Yeah. Rock, I thought you were saying. No, rock. Yeah, it was like rocks coming over the border. Wow. So he was younger than you. He was a little younger than me. Yeah, okay. And then, so he comes to me and says, hey, he's in Mazelan. Chapo's in Mazelan. He figured out also through the communication. Yeah, and I'm like, how do you know that? And then he kind of laid it out for me. So he's like, he's in Mazelan. And his bodyguard took him there. I'm like, how do you know this? And we've been up for like three days straight and just trying to do all this. And he's like – he pieced it together, and I'm like, okay, I believe you, but I'm not the one that needs to be convinced. We still need to convince Samar to move out of Culiacan, go down to Mazatlan, and essentially this is like February. And Mazatlan is a pretty big tourist destination, and we suspected Chapo was in a high-rise near the beach. And Samar was like, we can handle Kuyakhan, but if there's a full-blown gun battle in Mazelan. Yeah, a tourist hub. That's a bad day. But to their credit, they did. They're like, all right, we'll do it. So the team on the ground identified the Miramar Hotel. It's like a 10, 11-story high-rise. Filmed outside of that too. Oh, did you? Yeah. I know exactly which hotel it is. But they didn't know what room he was. They knew he was there, but they didn't know what room he was in. And so, again, I wasn't on the ground, but the version I was told was early one morning they went in, and the front desk manager, they were like, hey, where is he? And the guy was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And they were like, wrong answer. So the front – the night manager basically said, hey, there was a guy that came in in a wheelchair a couple days ago. I haven't seen him, but he's in this room. I think it was like 4.02. two so they went up samar breached the door chapo and emma his wife are in bed chapo jumps out he grabs like a rusty or some sort of ar-15 rifle goes into the bathroom um one of the samar commanders like basically says kill him and emma starts screaming like don't kill him not in front of the he has two twins who are like four or five at the time not in front of the kids not in front of the kids they give him like one chance they're like chop will come out and they see his hands kind of come out of the door and he's he's got no shirt on and they cuff him they whisk him down to the to the parking garage at the hotel and it's kind of that picture that got passed around where there's like a hand over over his like hairline yeah okay when then they told you it was your reaction like i knew they were i knew what was going on at the miramar but you're not getting any updates and then jake sent me it sent me and the whole like arizona team a text and it just says we got them boys we got them wow with the with the picture were you so happy yeah i was like holy shit at the time i'm like holy shit but then at the same the same time i'm like i've got to like like i know jake i know his family like all this sort of like he's in it's kind of in the lion's that in here like great that they got him but we still got to get him home and um so they they loaded chapo and a couple blackhawks um they flew to a military base and then from there they took chapo to um mexico city and then um dea i booked uh i booked jake a flight from mazalan direct to phoenix and dea made sure like basically walked him walked him on the plane to come back here come back home yeah and then he went at chapel went to altiplano prison outside the city high security prison and what it was like a couple years later that he managed to escape that as well yeah which yeah so all that happens like it it's kind of crazy and chaotic but they're still trying to put the the evidence together and all this like now they're doing the the actual investigative work the manhunt's over and now they're putting together you know where is he going to be tried Is he going to be extradited? So they're helping out on all that. I had transferred to D.C. Other people had kind of moved around a little bit because it's the federal government, and that's kind of how it progresses. And then one Saturday morning in 2015, 16, I get it. I wake up, and my phone is just blowing up. One of the guys, Gabe, is like, he's gone. I was like, who's gone? I thought, like, somebody died, like, from our group or something. I'm like, who's gone? And he's just like, JGL, Joaquin Guzman Loera, right? And I was like, I'm like, there's no way. There's no way. And he starts sending, posting, like sending links. I turn on the TV and it's all over the news. Chapo Guzman escapes the maximum security prison. It was crazy. The videos were insane. Essentially, the massive undertaking, they built a huge tunnel under the prison that would go from quite a few kilometers, miles, right? A few miles outside of the prison into under his – Shower stall. Shower stall, yeah. A huge hole there that nobody could see, and then he just disappeared. Yeah, there's that video. The guards go in, and he's not there. Go ahead. And – There's that video. There's that video where he, like, he kind of walks around. It's from the prison, like, from his cell, and he sits on the bed. He puts on shoes. You can see him tying his shoes. And then he goes around this little half wall that separates, you know, like the toilet area and stuff. And he's gone. There's a little – like a towel falls over and, like, that's it. And he's gone. Were you so mad? I was just like – All the work you put into it. Part of it, you're just kind of like, you've got to be kidding me. And then part of it's, like, pissed off. You're like – like, this is a slap in the face to not just U.S. law enforcement, but, like, the Mexican Marines put, like, their own men at risk. They have to live in that environment and constantly looking over their back. Like people were pissed. And I remember my boss was in Arizona when we captured him, and him and I are now in D.C. together. And he's like, Eric, what do you think? I remember telling him, like, Scott, you got to get the band back together. Like the only – there's only a handful of people in federal law enforcement that have the corporate knowledge of this guy. And a good chunk of them happened to be in D.C. And Ray, who was the initial point of contact I had with DEA, was also in – he was with DEA in Virginia too. So, yeah, they put the – they got the band back together. We're like, let's do it again. These are the only people that can actually catch this guy again. And so that started your investigation as trying to find him again. And it is interesting because I think it's – at that time, you were actively looking for him while I was too. maybe we crossed paths so i found out i'd been to sinaloa a few times before i'd reported on drug trafficking there obviously was very aware of who chapa was and uh and i uh and then i found out that he had fled uh and i had this idea like i know one of my very good friends is a journalist fixer in mexico who in sinaloa actually grew up in sinaloa he's any journalist that wants to do a story about Sinaloa, they contact this guy, amazing guy, Miguel Ángel Vega. And so I called up Miguel, and I was like, Miguel, what is happening, dude? Like, they fled. Everybody's saying he's in Sinaloa, for sure. He's the most wanted man in the world right now, and I think we should do a story about what the hunt for El Chapo looks like. What does the hunt for the most wanted man in the world look like? So I basically flew to Sinaloa, met Miguel in Culiacán, and we started the journey, me, Miguel, Alex, and Pete, part of our team, all the way to where his mom lived because she passed away a couple of years ago, which was a two-day journey out into the off-roads. We had Miguel's brother's SUV that eventually actually broke down. But we had, like, at some point it was so off-road that we were going through rivers and, like, water up until the middle of the car. We had to stay overnight in one of the towns. And when people would ask us what we were doing, we would say that we're going up to visit El Chapo's mother, and we get warnings. But most of all, it was interesting because everybody, there's just such a, more than fear, there's an enormous admiration and almost love for El Chapo in that part of the world, right? Because this is a man, the government, they see the government as having abandoned them. There's no programs to help the people of the mountains, the Sierra Madre Mountains. in Mexico. There's a lot of poverty. And here's a drug lord and an organization, the Sinaloa cartel, that actually helps the poor and cares about what happens to them. That's how they see it. So there's a lot of reverence for El Chapo, and that's what we saw everywhere. And I remember when we finally arrived in the town, it was crazy. The mother's house is, you could see, it's one of the first things you see when we arrive in the town because it's this beautiful, it's the biggest house in town, and it's right on the top of the hill. But we arrived, And one of the things that shocked us is that the hunt for the most wanted man in the world didn't seem to be a hunt because we saw no one. We thought we're not actually going to be able to get there because either we're stopped by the military that are in pursuit of El Chapo or we'll be stopped by the cartel themselves where they'll tell us where do you think you're going? Go back to where you came from. But none of that happened. So we kept on going further and further and further. We were never stopped. Eventually we get to the town. and there's just two sort of like there's like two or three military guys we actually have it on film and they asked what are you guys doing here and we said oh we've come to talk to la mama to the mother of el chapo and again even from the military guys there there was reverence and they basically they did the the go ahead salute saluted us and said oh yeah call them el señor oh yes please go ahead if you want to go and let us go and we went all the way up and we knocked on the mother's house and then these guys not very um nice looking guys showed up with armed obviously uh lots of uh weapons there's like two or three guys and they had walkie-talkies on them and they asked us we said we just want to talk to the mother we want to interview the mother of the chap and see how she's doing and uh and they said uh no i'm sorry you can't and they weren't being very helpful and we thought okay we can't leave we've spent 48 hours in a car you know in dangerous territory to get here we can't just leave so we thought okay let's just like go around town and see if you can talk to other people so the first our first stop was at the church because we knew there's a church just like a block from the mother's house that was built by el chapo for the mother who's very religious. And we stopped at the church, and the wife of the priest was there. And the priest or the pastor wasn't there at the time, but the wife was there, a very sweet lady offered us sandwiches. We were starving. And then as we were talking to her, this guy comes in a 4x4 and points to Pete, who happens to be the tallest guy holding a camera, but who also happens to be the only one that doesn't speak a word of Spanish. And they said, okay, you come with me. and Pete looks at us like what but yet you go what should I do and I start saying sorry I know it's strange but I'm actually the boss so you want to take me and I speak Spanish she doesn't speak Spanish you don't want to take him Miguel by the way my journalist friend Mexican friend was also trying to make the case that they should take him and not Pete so we were both basically fighting for the chance to go in this four by four because we wanted to see I knew they weren't going to kill us or i didn't think so and i thought that they wanted to actually introduce us to the mother or somebody in the cartel so it was a great for us a great moment right and then pete just looks at us and they're insisting no no no we it has to be him the the boss said it had to be him and i looked at pete and he said what would you do in my place mariana and i said look i'm dying to go so if it were me i would go but i can't tell you what to do and he says okay i'll go jumps into the four by four starts going this is like one of those quad by yeah yeah starts going and we just see pete like disappearing looking at us with a smile kind of nervous and then the three of us miguel me and alex looking at each other thinking what the heck did we just do this is we broke number one rule in journalism in situations like this right you never separate the team right and who knows we that now he's not we have no control over what happens with him so we're at We turn to the lady, the wife of the pastor, and we ask her, do you think they're going to kill him? What's happening? He says, oh, no, they're very good people. Muy buenas personas. They're not going to hurt him. Don't worry. Anyway Pete comes down after 20 minutes We so happy And he says essentially they want money They said they let you interview the mother if you pay And I said okay I can negotiate the pay So please take me this time. So this time they took us all up to meet the rest of the group, again, a bunch of armed men. And they got me on the phone. And still this day, Miguel and I think that it was one of the sons of El Chapo. We believe it was actually Ivan. Spoke very well English, great English. and basically told me, mi hija, called me, if you want to interview, you have to pay. And I explained, look, as a journalist, we don't pay for interviews. And then he got – initially he was very nice, and then he got pissed when I said, I'm sorry, but we are not going to pay. And he said, well, if you're not going to pay, you have exactly 10 minutes to leave my town, or else I'm going to send my men after you. And that was it. Wow. That was it. We left as fast as possible. I don't blame you on that one. But we did a story about this at the time I was working at Fusion. And the story came out, and it was, I don't know, like a half-hour film called Chasing El Chapo. And the idea was we went to look for what the chase for El Chapo looked like, but how it was virtually unexistent in the place where everybody thought El Chapo was hiding, which turned out to be the case. He was hiding right there. Yeah, it's just outside. We went to La Tuna, but he was hiding outside La Tuna. So then Sean Penn goes and meets and scoops me, meets El Chapo, but not only meets El Chapo, talks to El Chapo about the story that I had done, about how El Chapo, he said, El Chapo, you are famous. There's a story now running in American television where they came and tried to look for you. So tell me about your involvement with Sean Penn and how that actually led to the arrest of El Chapo. Sean Penn. Sean Penn. Yeah. So we did – the assessment was that he was in the mountains and trying to pinpoint exactly where. And Jake came to me one day. Jake was the agent that kind of spearheaded a lot of this. Came to me and said, I've got him. They're going to meet him. And I was annoyed. I'm like, who? Who's going to meet him? Like, what are you talking about? He's like, bro, Cato Castillo and Sean Penn. And I'm like – and we had known that Chapo was really fixated on having a biopic made of his life even prior to the 2014 capture. And he had pitched it to people in Los Angeles and some fairly well-known names, and they all passed. I would have said yes in a second. We should have told him. I'm like, hey, we'll see Mariana. and um so he's like yes sean penn quito castillo they're on a chartered flight uh to guadalajara and from there the assessment was that he would be picked up he had a chapo had a couple trusted pilots that they would be picked up and flown to the sierra into the mountains to wherever he was so dea was like look we could probably get some of some of the guadalajara guys to to do some surveillance but don't have high expectations and sure enough there was some surveillance of of penn and del castillo um in guadalajara and then and then the um they lost them can you back check a little bit for me how did jake even find out that they were going to visit him how did that so um chapo had a fixation with kate del castillo yeah so who's by the way a mexican actress who was in a bunch of very well known soap operas and he was very beautiful. He loves beautiful women. Fixated and I think she had made some positive social media posts about him or something. So we started kind of looking at that angle again and we saw that Kate Del Castillo and Sean Penn were on a flight out of LA to Guadalajara. Really, it only made sense after he escaped Altaplano. It's like, look, He knows that the clock is ticking, and he wants this biopic to be made. How Sean Penn, we didn't know at the time. I'm like, where does Sean Penn fit into this? Nobody really knew. But we knew who the pilot was. So we focused on the pilot. How did you know how the pilot was? Because he had, Trappell only had a few trusted pilots. One was in custody. And only left, like, two out there. and we thought that it was either going to be one of his sons or this trusted pilot or a combination of both that would take him. And it ended up being this pilot flew him from Guadalajara into the mountains. And because we knew who that pilot was, we were able to identify the mountain property. We have Sean Penn and Cato Castillo in Guadalajara. We knew they were being flown out by a trusted pilot. We didn't know where. So at this point, sorry, you were talking about how you figured out which pilot it was. Which pilot, yeah. And I'm pretty sure the guy went by El Diecisiete, El 17. And he was going to fly him out to meet the man, Chapo. So we identified this property in the mountains, and we knew that the pilot had gone there. We presumed that Penn and Del Castillo were there. So we're like, there's only one reason that they're there. Chapo may not have been staying there, but he's likely that he's going to be brought there. So what I – tell me if I'm wrong. But what I had heard was that it was no – finding out that Sean Penn first was flown – when he was flown to Mexico, he was flown to where? To Guadalajara? Guadalajara, yeah. So the fact that Sean Penn was flying to Guadalajara in an undisclosed or like sort of a secretive, looked like a secretive mission, and that Cato del Casi was there as well, these two big VIPs was what first raised the red flag, right? Correct. 100%. So that is true. That is true. Okay. Yes. So this, when you guys saw, wait, what is Sean Penn doing in Guadalajara with this very famous Mexican actress? And knowing that Kate del Castillo had recently tweeted about El Chapo, or what was, like, couldn't it have just been because they maybe were having an affair? It could have been, which probably I don't think would have changed the calculus much. But it was also that Chapo had a fixation with Keita Castillo, and he was a fan of her work in the telenovelas and stuff like that that she did. So when we saw Keita Castillo and Sean Penn, we were like, there's a high probability that they are going to be meeting with Chapo to try to figure out either like his biopic or whatever movie ambitions he still had. So that was what led us to focus on them. And by focusing on the pilot, we focused on them. And then all three of them ended up at this property in the mountains, and we weren't 100% convinced that Chapo was staying there, but we were convinced that he was going to be present to meet with Kate del Castillo and Sean Penn. So you were tracking the plane all the way as it was making its way from taking Kate del Castillo and Sean Penn to the mountains. You were tracking it all the way. We knew where they ended up. You did, because you were tracking the plane. It wasn't necessarily the plane per se. The plane was part of it. The phone. Somebody phone. There was some other stuff. Okay. Has this not been published? I don't know what's out there from the trial and that whole Kate Del Castillo, Sean Penn saga. One of their phones was being tapped. You guys tracked it all the way. There was an electronic footprint that allowed us to identify this ranch. And we knew that all three of them were there, and we had Samar ready to assault the ranch. So they were Mexican Marines. And you got to remember, like, Mexico was embarrassed. Like, Chapo escaped. You know, like, we're back to 2001 again and all this other sort of stuff. So they were like, hell or high water, we're going to hit this ranch. And then as that plan makes its way through the approval chain, through the Department of State, it's like, wait a second. Quay del Castillo has dual citizenship. Sean Penn is a U.S. citizen. then there's a high probability that this is going to be a violent encounter, and we don't want two U.S. citizens caught in a high-profile drug traffic shootout. So we were told can't hit it until we're confident that they're gone. So they left and St. Marr hit it. It was a big firefight. The reports are kind of sketchy. some reporting that Chapo was still there, some reporting that he wasn't. We were getting reports that he had been injured or went down a ravine on an ATV. There was all this different reporting was coming in. We couldn't make heads or tails of it. We didn't know what was true, what wasn't. But we knew that he wasn't there. They came up empty. I think a couple of cicadillos were killed, but he wasn't there. And we were kind of like, shit, we just shot our shot. And now he knows without question that the Mexican government and the U.S. government has him as like bullseye number one in their sights. So we had to regroup now what the third time? And we knew he was running even with fewer personnel than he had in 2014. We started focusing on a guy that went by the nickname Cholo Ivan. and he was like he was a feared sicario amongst sicarios like he was like the baddest yeah and in that world like he scared the shit out of people and that's not something that's done you know easy so we started focusing on focusing on um cholo ivan and there was another guy i forget his name but he went by the the nickname medusa we started focusing on them we had figured them to be in Los Mochis, which is kind of south of Sinaloa, like east, southwest of Sinaloa. North of Culiacan, the capital. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, yes, north, yes, sorry. Just outside of the coast, right? Right, yes. A little bit inside of it, yes. So a little ways outside of Culiacan, and this time they want to get eyes on the house. They want to see either Cholo Ivan or Chapo at the house. time goes by, they see food getting delivered, all this other sort of stuff. They don't, they can't say for certain who's there, who's not. So they basically kind of said, screw it, we're going to hit it. So as they're on approach, as the Marines are on approach, they start taking fire. They return fire. They're lobbing grenades. Grenades are being lobbed back at them. Like it's a full-blown, like 10-minute firefight just to get into the front door. They get in the front door, firefight inside ensues, it spills out on a balcony. I've got a picture of a dead Sicario with a handgun on a balcony of some sorts. Chapo's not there, but they've kind of seen this movie before, so they're like, all right, we're going to tear the house apart, we're going to set a perimeter, nobody in or out, we're going to hold this until we find them. So they find a tunnel in a bedroom closet, and then they're like, okay, he escaped through the tunnel again. He's probably in the sewers. What they didn't realize was by this time, like, Cholo Ivan and Chapo had popped out, hijacked a car, and were, like, getting out of Dodge. And this is where it gets a little fuzzy because they're stopped by the local police, and, you know, there's two different versions. And I guess believe whichever version you want. But one version says that Chapo basically tells the local police, you know who I am. I've got money. Let's go strike a deal. And he's taken to this kind of seedy hotel on the outskirts of Los Mochis. As that's happening, Samar starts getting reports that there was this carjacking. And they kind of put two and two together and be like, hey, we need to make sure that could probably be him. So they go to the scene of the carjacking, and then they see this kind of congregation of state locals in this seedy hotel parking lot. So they roll up, and this is where the version is like, whichever one you're going to believe. The local police are like, oh, thank God you're here. We caught him. We wanted to get out of the main thoroughfare, but here he is. The other version is they interrupted the negotiation to set him free. At any rate. They got him. They got him. Yeah. Finally. Finally. And I guess you were very happy. We weren't. But also. It was. Wanted to make sure he makes his way to the United States as fast as possible so he doesn't escape again. Right. And that was. January, 2017. January 19th of 2017. Was when he was next year. And I had a buddy in Mexico. He sent me a text. and he's like they just put him on a plane for Brooklyn. How did that feel to know that you had a part in all of that? It was – I was ridiculously proud of like the men and women that worked on it for that long and the tenacity at which they stuck with it because they could have bowed out a number of different points along the way. When you talk about when they first started getting indications that they were intercepting Chapo to the day he makes his appearance in the Brooklyn courthouse, there were a lot of ups and downs along the way, and they just stuck with it. They ignored the naysayers. They believed in their work product. Tremendously proud. Like no one would have ever thought this group out of Nogales, Arizona would have been able to get to the – by far the most wanted man in the Western atmosphere. Were you part of the trial? I was not part of the trial. We were – we went to the trial. You did? We spent a week up in Brooklyn. I remember seeing when the marshals ushered Chapo in being – it was anticlimactic. Even in my head for all these drug traffickers and stuff they had investigated over the years and stuff like that, you still – I still subconsciously built him into this like criminal mastermind that was bigger than governments and bigger than agencies. And when he came into the courtroom, he was clean shaven. He didn't have his standard mustache. He was in a dark blue suit. He looked almost like Goofy. Like he just was like a middle-aged guy that was just sitting. He was looking around. He waved to Emma, who was in the courthouse. And I just remember thinking, I'm like, that's the dude? That's the guy? It was very like – yeah, just anticlimactic. But Jack, the same guy from all those years ago in the Border Patrol, he testified at the trial. And it was extremely important to me that as he looked out over the courtroom, he's looking out. He's seeing Chapo, who obviously knows his name. He's seeing Emma, who knows his name, the defense attorneys. I wanted him to see like the 10 men and women that were also there with him so that there was like that sense of reassurance like, hey, bro, we got your back. And he testified probably two days on the stand. Super proud of the guy, man. I'm like, man, you came a long way from getting rocks thrown at you in Nogales in 2000 to testify against Chopper. And now Chopper is doing life in prison in Colorado. About an hour and a half from where I live. Is it really an hour and a half from where I live? He's your neighbor. Somewhat. Did anyone ever talk to Sean Penn after that? I mean, I'm sure law enforcement talked to him, right? Nobody from our team did. No? No. Do you think he knows? Now I'm sure it's been reported and he knows. I wonder how much he or even what he feels about that, the fact that his meeting with El Chapo ultimately led to Chapo's recapture. I don't know. So I was not happy because we had the opportunity, and there was no mistaking who they were meeting with. He is a wanted criminal over and over again. And I understand the State Department's position like, hey, we don't want to get U.S. citizens killed if we can avoid it. But at the same time, I was like, dude, come on, man. You know exactly who you're meeting with. Like whatever happens at that point, like that's on you. But the thing – I don't believe in coincidences. And the day after the Los Mochis capture was when his article dropped. Yeah, that's right. For Rolling Stone, he wrote an article about his meeting with Chapo. Yeah. So I wonder if that article – if Chapo was captured, if he wasn't captured, when that article would have dropped. I don't know. You don't think it would have dropped or would – I mean I think would have put a big bullseye on Mr. Penn. Because? Oh, because he put a lot out there. I don't remember. I read the article. Oh, in terms of the detail? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. He wasn't – yeah, yeah. I think Chapo being a free man, there's a – the calculation switches. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're – You know, like I don't believe for a second that there's a coincidence that that article was released the day after he was captured for the second time. So you think that he felt safe enough now that he's captured to put the article out? Yeah. Maybe. Yeah, it was interesting. You're annoyed at Sean Penn for not being able to catch El Chapo when you wanted, and I'm annoyed at him for scooping me. Fair enough. All right. We both have our grievances with Sean Penn. Let's go to – so then – okay, so then you were there. You stayed with HSI, right, for how much longer? I did. So, Chappell's trial wraps. I'm in D.C. All this is going on, like, to be said, like, I have three daughters between the time of the initial capture and his trial. So, I have three young kids. I felt that I had the opportunity to accomplish everything I wanted in my career. they wanted me to go so I came out to went out to Denver Colorado as the deputy special agent in charge ran that field office for a while with the special agent in charge and then that was where we wanted to settle we loved the west love the mountains the agency wanted me back in DC I didn't want to go back to DC so I spent my last couple years in what's called the office of professional responsibility, which is essentially the internal affairs apparatus, not just for HSI, but for all of ICE. Was that Shauna Ford case? Was that, that was before? That was before, that was in. Can you tell me a little bit about that case? And then I want to go back. Yeah, absolutely. So going back to when, when I was working on the case against Nacho Pies, there's this little town southwest of Tucson called Arivaca, Arizona. It's cattle ranches, It's very picturesque, rolling hills, saguaro cactuses, all that. But it is a massive smuggling hub. So the U.S.-Mexico border is just a couple miles south. It's very – there's all these canyons, and they smuggled a ton of marijuana through there. Cocaine to a lesser degree, but just shit tons of marijuana. There was a guy out there named Raul Junior Flores who was a smuggler. He was no angel. And in 2009 – in that 2009 era, there was a movement – militia movements along the border where they were doing their patriotic duty to patrol the border and all this augment border patrol. And it was a mess. They dressed like law enforcement, but they had no law enforcement authority. They were robbing aliens and stealing drug loads. There was all this undercurrent of criminal activity associated with them. Well, in 2009, there's Shawna Ford, a guy named Gaxiola, and a guy with the last name Bush. They do a home invasion on Raul Jr. Flores' home because they know him to be a smuggler, and they assume he'll either have cash or dope that they'll either steal and then turn around and sell to fund their operations. So wait, so they have a militia group on the border whose goal, I'm assuming, they would say is to fight against illegal immigration and drug trafficking, and yet they're going and stealing from a well-known drug trafficker so they can fund their own operations with the proceeds from drug trafficking? Yes. That was what their plan was. So they do a home invasion at Junior's house. He lives with his wife, and at the time I think his daughter, Bersinia, might have been 9 or 12. Shawna Ford and her gang shoot Junior. his wife calls 9-1-1 I've listened to those 9-1-1 calls you can actually hear the screaming and the shots in the background they kill Brisenia, the daughter and they kill 12 year old daughter she was either 9 or 12 at the time and they kill Junior somehow she I think got a gun and basically fired back and they fled Junior's dead her daughter's dead And they end up catching up with Shawna Ford and the other two. Shawna Ford gets – two of them got – Shawna Ford and the other guy's name. His last name was Bush. I forget his first name. They get the death penalty. The other guy pleads out and gets life in prison plus like 54 years. And that really thrust the whole kind of militia border movement in that little town of Aravaka into the national spotlight just because of the brutality of it. and the fact that it was a, you know. It's a crazy story. Shauna Ford was sort of the leader of the group, right? She was, yes. Yeah, I remember seeing photos of her. It's such a crazy story. Yeah. And you were investigating it to try. I had a case on Junior. The other interesting fact is that there was a defendant that I had arrested years prior who actually worked for Nacho on the south side. He ended up being a prosecution witness for the state of Arizona against Shawna Ford, Gexio, and Bush. He testified against them and the fact that they were there for no other reason than to run the home invasion. So he kind of – my book redeemed himself a little bit from his drug trafficking. When you were doing more of the sort of internal affairs, what cases – and this was internal affairs for ICE, correct? Correct, not for CBP, for ICE. What were some of the cases, though, coming through your hands, if you don't mind talking about it? I am nondisclosed in that regard. I can talk generally about what the cases were. So they range in anything from what's considered serious misconduct to criminal behavior. So that can be a DUI, which unfortunately is not all that uncommon. People get them, and as long as there were no aggravating circumstances, the courts would deal with it, and then the agency would deal with it accordingly. And then there were also complex, more criminal cases that our agents would work with other entities like the FBI and DHS Office of Inspector General who also do those oversight investigations. And some of those, they can be disturbing. There were some rape cases involving color of law and usually in detention settings, immigration detention settings. There were corruption issues involving like visa fraud type stuff where they would sell information for money in order to – and then visas would be procured like kind of a quid pro quo type stuff. Luckily, those weren't – they were not all that common, which is a good thing, but they were still there. Yeah, so corruption wasn't widespread. It was. Correct. Just like it exists in the CBP. Correct. Reported a lot about that. So when I told you those numbers when it comes to the CBP, which again was crazy, which was every 24 to 36 hours in the past 20 years where somebody was arrested from the CBP, does that – and that kind of shocked you. Do you think – and this is because the CBP is actually keeping those numbers. They have a record for this. Why is it that ICE, do you think, doesn't have this record? And also, do you think that the numbers are similar when it comes to ICE? I would venture to say that ICE does have those numbers. So one of the mandatory reporting requirements was an employee arrest for anything, whether it's a DUI, a domestic situation, or something felonious. So that data set exists within the agency. They have it, yes. Do you mind if I do a search real quick? Sure. I just am curious to see if – Yeah, whether or not they – Because I tried this morning, and that's what – my search revealed that there is no actual record the same way that CBP's record. That I don't doubt. Yeah, so here my search says that there are no public statistics that show how many ICE employees themselves are arrested per day and no source reports reliable per diem arrest rate for ICE staff. Does this make sense? It does. It does. So it doesn't mean that they don't keep track of them, but that they're not public, I guess. Correct, yeah. I guess, yeah. Which, yeah. So, but does it, does it, if you're looking at the CBP numbers, do you think that the ICE numbers are similar? I don't think they're that high. So I would see, when I worked in internal affairs, I would actually see the daily sheets of, you know, employees that get arrested. And it was not, it was not multiple per day. And it wasn't one every 24, 36. But you're also not supervising the whole country, right? So I was. Like the internal affairs apparatus, everything, any employee arrest or allegation funnels into a central repository, right? So you would see employee arrests. That would be kind of the first up front, like kind of bottom line up front stuff. And you might get a couple a week, not every hour on the hour for years on end. So when did the most recent recruitment surge start again? It would have been mid-2025-ish, first half of 2025 was when they – so my understanding, if I'm remembering correctly, like when that big, beautiful bill passed, it put a ton of money into the agency's coffers and also ballooned their workforce. And they had a set period of time to act on all that. And so who do you think – how do you think that's going, their recruitment? It's a disaster. I mean I don't know any other way to say it. So – and I talked to one of my good friends who's in D.C. And in one pay period in January of this year, 26, they onboarded 1,246 new agents and officers. So to put some context to that, in a typical year, and I can really speak to the HSI side, HSI might onboard 400 agents in an entire year. So you're talking over three times that in a snapshot in a two-week period in January. What is the – why is that a problem? Explain. I know, but – So it's a problem on several fronts. I think the biggest one to me is the fact that you cannot adequately assess that and make a hiring determination in that short of time. So normally, like a background investigation would take months. They would comb through your past. They would talk to your neighbors. They would talk to former employers. There's polygraphs involved. There's all this other sort of stuff that comes in just for the background side of it, and that's to make sure that essentially you're a good human being. The other side of that is like the medical. So there's automatic medical disqualifiers, and I don't have the list in front of me, but if anybody has, say, they're asthmatic, they would get put into a different bucket where they would have a more in-depth medical assessment you know notes from doctors what are your you know prescriptions all that sort of stuff and then not then the agency's medical team would make an assessment that says nope this is manageable or nope this isn't but that's all a very deliberate and time-consuming process when you're talking about you know HIPAA acts and medical records and all this other sort of stuff so it's in my in my professional opinion, it is irresponsible. The hiring decision you make today, you're living with 10 to 25 years from now. So it is extremely important to do everything in your power to get that decision right, to make sure that it's the right person, that their background is not in question, their integrity isn't in question, they're medically sound, they're psychologically sound, all these things, because that is a multi-decade investment that you're making. And you're also putting that individual out on the street. Armed. Armed, ideally. In volatile situations. Right, to enhance public safety and to protect the American population. And I think what you're seeing is kind of a – where they're not getting it right, to put it bluntly. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think those people maybe don't know, but it's the first time in modern American history where federal force is being used against civil rights of Americans. You know, the deployment of military inside the United States has happened before, but it is usually to protect citizens. and you know it's the first or it's they're deployed when when local and state officials fail to do so right and when there's a request or at their request yeah but now instead of actually protecting the citizens there seem to be actively harming them hurting them and killing them I do feel there's a fundamental breakdown in leadership where that you have undertrained, arguably poorly vetted, and ill-equipped people put into volatile situations. And I'll say the one thing categorically that I'm absolutely against is the masks. I've been against that from the beginning. I don't see any reason why domestic U.S. law enforcement should be wearing masks. That is something that – and I know you've seen it in your travels. That is not something that should be – we just shouldn't stand for that. And I understand the doxing. Yeah, go ahead. They'll say, like, oh, it's for doxing and stuff like that. My counterpoint to there is like then stand up a threat division that looks at this, that understands the elements of like, what is it, 18 USC 119 or 111, whatever those statutes are. And issue target letters or open investigations into people that are actually making online threats. But to have U.S. law enforcement wearing masks, unmarked cars, no uniforms. It strips away all accountability, right? from them because they can do whatever they want and they're not going to know exactly who did it. And there's a level of protection that shouldn't be there. I'm absolutely against it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what to say other than that. Yeah. And talk to me also about the use of force because this is something that is very excessive. It's troubling. It's hard to watch. So 25 years I served in the agency. Your use of force in all the training and all the real-world operations that I was involved in, minimal amount of force necessary to complete the law enforcement objective. If that's an arrest, if that's a clearing of a building, whatever it may be. And that force can escalate and de-escalate at a moment's notice. Just because you escalate, you don't stay there. Maybe the person is like, oh, shit, I'm good, I'm good. Bring it back down. And what I see here is there's no – it's just straight to the top, and it's staying there. And I worry that that becomes normalized and that becomes, to a lack of a better degree, condoned. And there's no – I've never been out to intentionally burn someone, but at the same time, there's right and wrong. And everybody knows in this line of work when someone's out of line. And at some point, people have to stand up and be like, that's not okay. And I hope more people do because, like, it's just – I worry that, like, this just becomes kind of baked into the – baked into the norm. Do you have many of your colleagues that are standing up and saying this? And if you're not, why not? So the departments had a very chilling effect. So there's two things. One is in the internal affairs world, you do have a duty to – you have an obligation to report. So when you are a witness to any misconduct, however minor or severe, you're obligated to report that. If it turns out that you knew about it and withheld it, then now you've taken an internal affairs charge in of itself. The department has had a real chilling effect in anybody speaking out against what's going on. So I think, again, to my earlier point of the fundamental lack of leadership and accountability that that leadership is pushing down onto its workforce is kind of allowing or perpetuating this stuff to happen. In the past, this would never stand. I know you're retired, but do you fear any consequences for being so outspoken about what you think, how you think, what they're doing? No, not really. I mean, I haven't changed from when I started to now. If I think something I'm going to say, people may or may not agree with it. I've lost friends. Have you? Over speaking out against what's going on, yeah. So you started speaking out recently once these raids started. So what did they call you or email you and say, hey, I can't believe you're saying this? What did they say? It was worse than that. A guy who I've known for, what are we, 2026? For 24 years. Yeah. Was at my wedding. Texted me after the Renee Good shooting and said, if I ever see you, if you ever see me on the street, you better turn around and walk the other way. Wow. He's threatening you. Wow. Yeah. How did that make you feel? I told him to fuck off and blocked him. Where do you think that's coming from? I think it's coming from just the entrenched tribalism that, like, you're kind of seeing in the overall population. And there is this undercurrent in law enforcement about speaking out against law enforcement, like, you know, that thin blue line type thing. I understand it. I've never agreed with it. If I make mistakes, hold me accountable or I'll own them myself. But we didn't take an oath of like omerta. Like you took an oath to like uphold and defend the constitution, right? And like there's that – you're hired because somebody assessed that you have a strong moral compass, you're principled in your beliefs, and you can enforce laws fairly but also empathetically, that you don't need to use excessive force or these kind of like crazy tactics. and like that has coexisted for angry there's always there's issues and you know you see you've seen those over the years but those principles have held and been practiced by law enforcement officers for decades and i don't know why it's unraveling but like it pisses me off and i think at the end of the day it also the other thing that if anybody can take away from this is like there are great men and women in law enforcement, but there is this divide where there's like a lack of trust. I mean, you see it from, from the departmental level. Um, and I've asked other people, I'm like, if there was another nine 11 or if there was a mass shooting, would you believe what, what the department of Homeland security says on the news? I wouldn't. And I think that is a, that is scary yeah and i don't know i'm not trying to be like you know sky is falling or theoretical but like the divide between the public and law enforcement is growing the divide between federal and state and local law enforcement is growing and like at some point like adults need to kind of bring down the temperature and like that trust is broken it's gonna i've said this before it's going to take years if especially within dhs if that trust of the public can ever be replaced that's why so many people are talking about um getting rid of the whole department um because of it i think that there's the it's this we're living in times where you're either with me or you're against me right and if you are with me you have to stand with me even if we do bad stuff or wrong stuff, right? It's you are part of my P, my tribe, right? Yeah. And there is a zero nuance. And therefore, yeah, the issues are very black and white. And so the fact that you spoke out against your people leads people like your friends to then say, like, you're not part of us anymore. You're not part of this team anymore. You're not part of this tribe anymore. And that's not helpful. It's not good for anyone. I'm 100 percent right, and I would say that there are men and women that I know and have been in the thick of it with that I would do anything in the world for. Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter. And it also comes down to like, hey, I'm confident enough in my moral compass and in my principles and beliefs that you don't have to agree with them. But you know what? Like I don't have the energy or the patience or really the desire to be affiliated with someone if they're just going to be like – like basically like fuck you. You're talking bad about cops. If that's your mentality, then there's no net loss to me. Right. And I mean, we can talk, there's things that you can talk around in circles, but these are, this is, isn't it, tell me about the excessive use of force and what force and what you guys were trained and what's actually in the manuals, right, of what you should and should not do. And when you see it on TV, for example, the pepper spraying in somebody's face right into somebody, we see this again and again every day in the news it seems. Is that okay? Are you allowed to do that? If a person isn't, you know, the protesters going up to protesters and just pepper spraying right inches away from their face into their eyes, is that allowed? So technically it's probably allowed. I would say that there's also this just because you may be legally able to do something does not make it carte blanche authority or a good decision to do it. The other thing that I was always trained and practiced was every one of your actions as a law enforcement officer, especially in dealing with arrests and stuff like that, needs to be intentional and deliberate and in furtherance of an objective. What are you trying to accomplish? If what you're doing is not accomplishing that objective, you either need to stop doing it and do something else or call in other people who can figure it out and assist you with it. So what I mean by that is I've seen videos where there's a protester standing in front of a government vehicle. In my mind, I'm thinking, well, I should have an arrest team either in my vehicle or in a follow vehicle. And instead of getting out and just lambasting the guy into the snowbank and getting in our trucks and leave, I'm going to put him in handcuffs and arrest him and take him to be processed. And if he's prosecuted, he's not. And if not, he'll be released. But like the constant physical conflict does nothing to further any law enforcement objective. So if you're trying to spray somebody with pepper spray, you're trying to either disperse a crowd or stop someone who's being noncompliant, which would essentially either end up in an unawful assembly and the state locals would come in and push people out or a person would get arrested. But, again, I wrestle with what is the law enforcement objective of continuously spraying people or hitting them with the batons or just like these WWF wrestling moves that I've never seen or ever been trained or taught or anything like that. Trying to tackle people to the ground constantly? What is that about? And for what? Again, to what is your objective? And I think people, if they objectively look at these cases, will say there is no law enforcement objective. Like what are you trying to accomplish? Everything you're doing as a law enforcement officer should be in furtherance of either enforcing the law or accomplishing that objective, and I don't see it here. Like the vehicle, like how they handle vehicles, smashing out windows, and like there's just so many things. I just – like where is the training? Where is the supervision? Where is the accountability? Do you think that the Renee Good or the Alex Freddie's deaths were justified? It's a tough question. I think they – so having been injured – I was hit in a vehicle. We were rescuing hostages in 2008. I'm very cognizant of where I placed myself in front of or behind vehicles. I don't see a law enforcement reason for the officer who shot Renee Good to be standing in front of the vehicle. And if only he had also been hurt. Which makes it even more questionable, in my opinion, that I was hurt. I mean, I didn't have the degree of injuries he did. My partner had more severe injuries than he did. But after that event, like, we did a complete debrief as a tactical team as to, like, okay, how do we approach these vehicle scenarios? How can we better our tactics and train differently and stuff like that? We went to other agencies, ATF and FBI and ask them questions and stuff like that. And that was after a single incident. So here, I don't know why people are standing in front of vehicles. Why do you think he shot her? I think it's policing by ego, putting it bluntly. I think there's a – people have a problem with defiance when they have – when they're in a position of authority. I'm not in his head, so I can't say for certain, but in just looking at everything, that case included, I think there's a lot of policing by Ego. And that loses every time. so it's this idea that they're just so annoyed that they are in a position of authority and these people aren't listening to them or doing what they want them to do immediately and they feel yeah their egos are bruised and they need to do something and they need to show how they are in the position of power yeah and i think there's everybody kind of has a breaking point one of the things that i do worry about is it's not i was never verbally accosted day in day out all day every day like being called a piece of shit and a motherfucker and all these things so i don't care who you are when you hear that day in day out it's going to take a mental toll on you what i don't know is if the agency is providing kind of the the psychological counseling that it should to kind of ratchet down the the mindset of some of these some of these folks that are dealing with that day in day out so i put some of the onus on the agency i put others on the fact that um you got to have tough skin it's like i wouldn't want to be called that day in day out um but at the same time but again this is why recruitment is so important and making sure that you're training people before putting them out there right 100 and law enforcement officers federal, state, local, it does not matter. You are vested with the authority to take liberty and legally take life. It took me a couple years to really understand the gravity of that and the amount of authority that you're given and that is a privilege. They give that to you because they trust your judgment. They trust your abilities to actually execute your duties in the fullness of your capabilities and with empathy and fairness and all those things. But I think it's lost on people the gravity of the authority that they actually have and that like the average citizen cannot take someone's liberty and not take life legally. So somewhere along the line, there needs to be a complete reset of how we're doing things or how they're doing things because this is not policing and this is not law enforcement as I practiced it. Tell me also, Eric, how these are people, even the ones that have been in the force or agents for a long time, that they are, this is not what they're trained to be doing, right? They're not supposed to be in military gear on the streets of America coming up against protesters. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? A hundred percent. So the only time that I got crowd control i got crowd crowd control training for maybe like a four-hour block in two different areas in my 25 year career once at the u.s border patrol academy which was basically like stand in a line and you know back then they had those big like um like wooden uh nightsticks right hold the line that was it and then once when i went through um tactical training and that was more just for like crowd control and actually like protecting buildings and stuff like that, not dealing with like crowds that are either gathering quickly or unannounced and throwing snowballs and water bottles and all that sort of stuff. There is no training. And that's where I've said before, like the agency is sending its own people into a situation that they're under-trained for, under-equipped for, and unprepared for. And unfortunately, these are some of the results that come when that dynamic is prevalent for as long as it has been. Yeah, so it's not just putting people, civilians at risk. You're also endangering the lives of the actual agents in this case because they're not trained for this situation. Do you think Alex Bredi's killing was justified? No, I don't. Just you looked at the videos and you don't think there's any way that he should have been shot. I think the videos speak for itself with regard to the fact that when you look at the facts, he did not have a weapon. He had it before and then it was removed from his body. Do you think any of your colleagues would think that it was justified? Or former colleagues? Some. Some will. How would they justify it? Like an us versus them mentality. And I think that's really part of the psyche that concerns me is that there is that us versus them mentality, like the public is the enemy. I think if anybody looked at that objectively who's been in law enforcement, there is no justification for the use of deadly force nonetheless. 10 or 11 shots, some of them while he was already on the ground incapacitated. Yeah. I don't know how you square that. What would you – if you were still working in the internal affairs, what would you do? I would be raising holy hell. I don't know how else to say it. Like there is – this is not the agency that I spent 25 years with. This is not how we were trained. Immigration has always been a little bit of a political hand grenade. But at the same time, we were always able to strike the balance between the enforcement side, the humanitarian side, The understanding that there's various – they call it TPS, temporary protected status for different countries or stuff like that. Here it just seems cruel. And the literal – sure, did they – if you're here without status or illegally, did you break a law? Yes, you did. I probably broke four laws this week, and it's Monday. That being – and I say that figuratively a little bit of tongue-in-cheek because the level of kind of cruelty and the level of force that's being – that's out there for civil immigration enforcement. So these aren't – the majority of these cases or these incidents are not being charged with a criminal offense like that I did for 25 years. So this is a civil matter. Yeah. So they're not even being charged with like an illegal entry or an entry without inspection, right? They're just going after them because they are here illegally or like they have a final order of deportation and stuff like that. Or the immigration system, the legal process is in disarray as well. Like there's far too few immigration judges. I mean – It takes forever to act. You can get papers and become documented if you wanted to. The INA was enacted in what, like 1950 or 1952. It's never been really reformed or amended in a way that's consistent with the current migration patterns and the needs and all that sort of stuff of the modern era. So you're – but to answer your question, like I would be raising a holy out. I'd be like how are we not – like we have to hold the people accountable. when when it is this brazen this isn't like you know hey i had too many beers and i own it or something like that like like they're beating the shit out of people and then not like for they don't stop and they're not yeah and like old ladies like i saw a video this morning was this like old lady where they even did a choke hold on an old yeah is that allowed no i've been is that part of your training no and i've been vocal about the the choke holds too like you know Again, it goes back to like what are you trying to accomplish? When you grab someone in a carotid or a chokehold, like that's – by policy goes into the deadly force, even if it's momentarily. But you're like what are we doing? Like this is not – this is not us. This is not what I did, what friends that I risked my lives for and they risked their lives for me. This is not what we did. And it's painful to see. I feel for the – there's no winners in this. But ultimately, the general – we serve the public. We are public servants. And when you lose the trust of the public, you've lost. I don't know how you fix that. Like when you look at departments like that have had major events in the past where they've lost public trust, it takes years and decades in concentrated effort to rebuild that. I don't see it, at least not yet. Do you think anyone is raising hell right now inside internal affairs? Some of the people I've worked with, to the extent they can, they are. They are vocalizing the fact that like this is not – This is not okay. So there are people inside the agency saying and actively voicing concern for these practices? They are. There is a concern that they get crushed for it. Like they're – They're afraid of seeking out. Yeah, 100 percent, without question. Some of them will do the right thing. Some of them will – most of them just want to, like, retire and then speak out like you're doing. I retired almost two years ago, so I got a little bit of daylight. Yeah, I kind of wish you hadn't, actually. I would have been fired. There's no doubt about it. I would have been fired. Yeah, without question. Yeah. And I would have been okay with it. I mean when you see career FBI agents, so not executives, but for example, there was an FBI group supervisor in Minneapolis who resigned because he was told to change the case file of the Renee Good shooting from a civil rights investigation to an assault on a federal officer investigation. And I just want to just for a second just – I can't underscore the significance of that enough. I don't know him, but I absolutely respect him because he went through a 12- to 18-month process to just get hired by the FBI. He then goes to another six or eight months of academy training. He comes out. He gets his first assignment. He's on probation for three years. at the three-year mark now he can kind of run his own cases. By a few years later, maybe he gets the opportunity to run his own group, which is where we are now. So he's got somewhere between 10 and 12 years invested in an agency and has the wherewithal and the courage to say, this is not what I stand up for. So kudos to him. You got my respect. Yeah, I think we need a lot more of him and a lot more of you. We need more people raising alarms. Like it doesn't make you anti-law enforcement. I'm not anti-law enforcement. And I believe in strong borders and immigration enforcement and all that other sort of stuff. But there's a way to do it responsibly. There's a way to do it with empathy and fairness and in the confines of the law and in the confines of the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment. And I just – like that's not where we're at right now. Yeah, it really isn't. It's scary. I mean, it's scary. I mean, as a journalist who's traveled around the world and seen so much of this happening in other countries, never expected it to happen here. I mean, the armed secret police on the streets of America, you know, brutalizing American and killing American citizens. It's scary. And to think back to this idea that so much of it started because of this number that Stephen Miller pulled out of his butt where 3,000 Americans – I mean immigrants had to be deported every year. That's – every day, sorry. It was something like a million-something he wanted deported every year, which is about 3,000 a day, which – you know, we had a president, President Trump, who ran on his campaign. was part of it was we're going to go after the criminals, right? Criminal immigrants who are out there, and they have no place in America, and they should be deported. And I'm with them. Nobody wants criminals. I mean, nobody wants rapists and, you know. We have enough, like. Assassins. We have enough of our own here. Exactly. We don't need those people here. We want them deported. But what's happening right now, it's under 10% of the people being deported actually have any sort of criminal record, a violent criminal record in their case. And which also leads me to think, like, the amount of time and resources that are being spent and going after, you know, the fathers and the mothers who have done nothing wrong, who are, you know, working, you know, in businesses and all around the U.S. And aren't we actually being – getting distracted from the job at hand, which is actually protecting Americans from the violent criminals that you were trying to catch from the start? Isn't this sort of a – you're using those resources, diverting these resources and keeping America more unsafe and unprotected in many ways? What would you say about that? I mean, you're absolutely right. And I guess the way I would say it is that when you look back over the last six or eight months with these various surge operations, right, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, these other – Memphis, these other places, you're sending agents. And this is where I do put onus on the department and the agency because they're sending HSI agents who have become kind of like a Swiss army knife to try to solve problems and just plug and play. And to civil immigration enforcement operations and things like that. But at the same time, that means, and I mean this sincerely, there are child exploitation cases that are going unworked, human trafficking cases that are going unworked, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, you name it, that are not victimless crimes. And I'm not saying civil immigration is, but those cases are – a lot of them are technical. A lot of them take time to put together. And by way of example, the same guy I've talked about, Jack, he's been sent to these enforcement operations, and he has been essentially the cornerstone of what the agency's investigative priorities have been on the Sinaloa cartel for the better part of a decade. And if you don't think that those organizations are constantly adapting and changing and exploiting, absolutely. And I use that as a firsthand example that I can say conclusively we're losing on. We've taken him and some others out of that pressure that we've been putting on Sina Loa since 2012 and had a tremendous amount of success to I don't know what they're doing, but I can know what they're not doing. And I think you take that on a macro level across the nation. And, you know, there's – the big thing for me is, like, you have, like, child exploitation victims. You have human trafficking victims. You have all these, like, other crimes that don't stop. And these agents are dedicated to working those cases. And some of them are even trying to do the job, like, from their hotel room in L.A. or Chicago or wherever they are because – So they're being deployed to the cities for these immigration raids, but they're still working on the cases that they – Because they have that passion. They have that drive. And they're like, well, fuck it. I'm not going to not do the work that I was asked to do or believe in. And I understand we don't always get to pick and choose what we work. But at the same time, like – Yeah. So all of this is actually keeping America more unprotected and unsafer than it was initially by not – by diverting all these resources to the current immigration rights. I think it has – I think it's creating a lot of unforeseen or unintended vulnerabilities from these other transnational criminal organizations because, like, people are distracted. It's not just ICE. Like, they've sent DE agents and ATF agents and FBI agents to this, and, you know, like, God forbid there's another terrorist attack. And you have however many FBI agents who, like, they man the JTTFs of the world and stuff like that, and they're doing civil immigration. Yeah, and these terrorist organizations, I've reported on a few of them, and these criminal groups and the Sinaloa Cartel, they are actively looking for ways to get the upper hand and to exploit. And they, like you said, they adapt, and they see every single little opening to do what they're paying attention. They pay attention. Pay attention. So they're looking at us right now as well. Yeah. I mean, this has been a fascinating conversation, Eric. I commend you so much for what you're doing, for speaking out. I know it probably isn't easy. I know that you sort of minimize how the impact that this has had on you because you say you're not afraid. But I'm sure it hasn't been easy. And losing friends, I'm sure, is only a little part of how hard this must be for you. Great. My wife will tell me, she's like, your girls will be proud. I've got three young girls, and they're like, hey, your girls will be proud. That's the – I can live with the people not liking me. That's okay. Well, I wish there were a million more Eric Valenars out there. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.