Latest / Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement / #018- “Agent Under Fire” Part 1

Transcript

#018- “Agent Under Fire” Part 1 · Blue Grit Podcast: The Voice of Texas Law Enforcement

0:01
SPEAKER_03: This episode of Blue Grip Podcast is brought to you by Police One Academy, Alexipole Solutions.
0:20
SPEAKER_05: We on the highway, make it a weeping shot in the book on the highway.
0:42
SPEAKER_04: I was gone a little bit.
0:44
SPEAKER_03: You were gone, yeah.
0:44
SPEAKER_03: Like you you left me.
0:46
SPEAKER_04: I felt like I was missed.
0:47
SPEAKER_03: I had to man the ship for like two episodes.
0:50
SPEAKER_04: I felt like I was missed.
0:51
SPEAKER_04: JW called you me one day.
0:53
SPEAKER_03: Well, I felt divorced.
0:56
SPEAKER_03: It's only just be good.
0:58
SPEAKER_04: It worked well.
0:59
SPEAKER_03: Well, I missed you.
1:00
SPEAKER_04: It worked well.
1:00
SPEAKER_04: Missed y'all.
1:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm glad you're back.
1:02
SPEAKER_04: I'm glad to be back.
1:03
SPEAKER_04: It's good to be missed sometimes.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: Well.
1:05
SPEAKER_03: Before we ask, we dive off into this uh really intense number two episode.
1:10
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna talk about that in just a second, the hiccup that we've had.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: You guys subscribe to the uh subscribe to the channel, hit that download button.
1:17
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna pop it up here, there, right here.
1:21
SPEAKER_03: Uh, hit that subscribe button and again download these episodes.
1:25
SPEAKER_03: That's how they measure our job performance and how we do on the podcast.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: So please download the episodes and the subscribe to the channel.
1:32
SPEAKER_03: That's how we kind of judge how me and Clint are doing on the podcast.
1:40
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure you will.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you will.
1:42
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
1:43
SPEAKER_03: So before we begin, we've got a really, really, really, really special guest on today.
1:48
SPEAKER_03: Victor.
1:49
SPEAKER_03: This is his second time being on.
1:51
SPEAKER_03: We want to go ahead and throw that out there.
1:53
SPEAKER_03: He was on a couple weeks ago, and what we did not know, uh, you know, we're kind of learning through this process.
1:59
SPEAKER_03: Austin had a uh pretty severe storm, and uh we had a pretty powerful episode, and what we did not know is that when the power surge here happens in our headquarters and the power goes off, our soundboard here in the uh podcast headquarters, it reverts back to the stock settings.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: So our badass episode did not have did not capture any sound.
2:24
SPEAKER_04: But have no fear this one is gonna be more badass than the first one.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, round two is gonna be pretty uh it's gonna it's gonna top the charts.
2:31
SPEAKER_03: So I want to tell you thank you for coming back and doing round two.
2:34
SPEAKER_03: Uh man, it's uh it's a pretty, and I'm telling y'all, y'all better strap in and uh and get ready because this is a pretty pretty awesome story.
2:42
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's a great it's a crazy story.
2:45
SPEAKER_04: Um and I hope if if you've selected an episode to listen to, I hope you listen to this episode with Victor because there's a broader picture of some of the concerns and the craziness of his story.
2:58
SPEAKER_04: Um not just somebody that's uh served our country in a law enforcement role and been injured, but there's so many other uh issues that uh Victor and I were talking about them even before we came on, the stuff that he faced.
3:11
SPEAKER_04: And it's a crazy story, but I appreciate you coming back.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: It's uh you've got a lot going on and for you to take time to come back and well that's it's to me it's it's it's important, um especially what you guys do, and and thank you for everything that you guys do and and the association because uh this is how important I I I wanted to come back because um I I want people to be able to hear not just the story, but like you said, it's the overwhelming uh uh ripple effect that the story has because it has a lot of phases to it.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, we could just talk about the incident itself, then border security, then all the implications of national security and and everything that we're actually living through right now.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
3:54
SPEAKER_03: So Victor Avila.
3:56
SPEAKER_03: Yes, sir.
3:57
SPEAKER_03: Tell us a bit about you, where you grew up at, how you got introduced.
4:00
SPEAKER_03: Uh, for those that don't know, he's got a law enforcement background.
4:04
SPEAKER_03: Um tell us about you, where you grew up at.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Grew up in El Paso, Texas, uh born and raised there.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: Um got introduced to law enforcement um as a El Paso police explorer when I was, I think, 15 or 16, which is uh the explorers are attached uh attached to like the the Boy Scouts.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: And um uh a friend of mine, a family member, got me in there, and I loved it because they gave you a uniform.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: You actually rode along with the police officers, you helped them out at the parades, and you got a lot of training, a little firearms training, all that good stuff.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Plus, what what it did for me, it really exposed um what a police officer does on a daily basis.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: That first of all, they're real people with real problems and real issues, just like everyone else.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, have to deal with a stressful occupation.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so a lot I grew up respecting the police and having even a little fear of the police, as uh um my parents taught me to be that way.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: And um, and so I I really wanted to see that other side.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: And it was it was very at first, I remember kind of overwhelming um being with the police officers and they're gonna have lunch.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, they eat.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're you know you're you're in a in a you grew up in this in this sheltered environment.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a good home with two parents, uh, not a lot, but we're happy and um not not having law enforcement in our lives as far as crime.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: And I'll talk a little bit more about that because my first assignment from um graduating college, um, El Paso has a lot of uh heavy presence of federal law enforcement, and everybody's like, you know, you graduate from UTEP with a criminal justice degree, what are you gonna be?
5:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be a Fed.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's easier said than done.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: Some people get to do it.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: I actually did an internship when I was uh at UTEP, and I don't even think they offer that anymore.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: And you did a whole semester at the port of entry with back then U.S.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: Customs Service.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: They give you a uniform and you shadow a CBP inspector.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, now it's CBP inspector, back then U.S.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Customs Inspector, every two weeks at different ports of entry.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Boy, talk about the liability, too.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: Boy, now and and then me growing up going in, you know, back and forth from the border, it was cool to see the other side uh of the inspectors of how they inspected the vehicles, all that.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: But uh kind of behind the scenes, behind the scenes, especially when they got the seizures, and that's the first time I saw the the first response by a special agent, showed up in an unmarked vehicle, you know, jeans and a t-shirt, badge, and gun.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Who is this guy?
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh, well, that's the special agent.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: He takes over and he's gonna open the investigation and takes the interrogation and all that good stuff.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Well, that's that's the guy I want to be.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Yeah, get in line.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: There's about a thousand of us trying to get that.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: He slides up in James Bond music's probably right.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: It looked cool.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: I was impressed.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: I was impressed.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And uh I started off uh as a state parole officer, which now looking back at my career, it really shaped me into really understanding the criminal element and culture because I was 22 years old, and uh first of all, I quickly learned that people people go to prison, they don't stay in prison.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Everybody thinks, and oh, you went to jail, that's that's it, you're never gonna see them again.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: No, they're gonna be out, and they're gonna be out in your community, and they're gonna be shopping next to you at Walmart and at the restaurant next to you.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: And as a matter of fact, there's an agent, and you probably have those stories too, bumping into people like this at stores and on your personal time, and they're amongst us.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: So um I got the exposure of the gang element.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: I became a gang intelligence officer, the uh the sex offenders, the the worst of the worst, right?
7:53
SPEAKER_01: I supervised those, and I I really saw the other culture uh of when people you announced to the family, you know, your loved one is going back to prison, and they're like, oh, so he's not gonna be here for this Thanksgiving.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: In my family, that's a tragedy, right?
8:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so here uh it's accepted.
8:13
SPEAKER_01: Being part of that criminal justice system to them, it's normal because we don't have new people.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: We do have, but not many, committing new crimes all the time.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: It's the same, you know, the recidivism.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: We have the same people committing the crimes mostly.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: Same thing that's happening.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: We talked a little bit about what's happening in New York.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: It's the same group of people committing crimes over and over again, and so that exposed me.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: And then one day, um, these uh two federal probation officers showed up to the office.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: They had a case in common from state parole and federal probation, and they show up in suits, and I'm like, who are these people?
8:47
SPEAKER_01: All they're they're federal probation officers, and they basically do what we do, but at the federal service, at the federal level.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me look take a look into that, and I did, and uh, I was fortunately hired, brought me to San Antonio uh as a federal probation officer, uh, covered all the Del Rio sector area, um, and I learned the U.S.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: court system, the federal sentencing guidelines.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: Which is complex.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: It's very complex.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're talking now assisting U.S.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: attorneys, defense attorneys, uh filing and answering objections, going to court, answering before a federal district judge.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And again, I thought that was gonna be my 20-year career.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: But part of being a federal probation officer is interviewing not just the defendant, but the agents, because uh a lot of them are very, very poor writers.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes they left a lot of details out that for the sentencing guidelines, you needed those details to determine what direction the guideline was gonna take you for either more or less time.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: And so I interviewed a lot of the all the the special agents, DEA, FBI, back then U.S.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: Customs, INS, and Secret Service, all these cases that we had, money laundering cases.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm gonna I'm gonna stop you real quick, okay?
10:05
SPEAKER_03: For our listeners, watchers, voyeurs, call it what it is and get it out there right now.
10:12
SPEAKER_03: Because let's just call it what it is, the FBI, and I I know a lot of FBI agents out there, God love you.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: But admit it, were the FBI guys when you would call the FBI agents the ones that didn't maybe put enough detail in there, were they not the ones that got a little more butthurt than than the other ones?
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, and and this is I'm glad you brought this up, and let me tell you why.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Um there was very rare cases that the FBI was the case agent.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: Or in other words, that they were the case.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: It was a DEA case, it was a US custom case, then that FBI would attach themselves to it.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh and guess who did the the press conference?
10:53
SPEAKER_01: The FBI.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: But they weren't the case agent.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Ah, okay.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh they were captured.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: I have a lot and I'll tell you this because it just came to mind.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: I have this picture.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: I did a big corruption case of a U.S.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: Border Patrol agent who's corrupt uh in that area in El Paso, New Mexico area.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: And uh FBI, you know, attached themselves.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: And but I was a case agent.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: And there's a picture that I showed where I'm walking him to jail in El Paso, and uh FBI, I always I always kid around with this picture when I do these uh these presentations because there's always an FBI agent in the in in the audience, and there's an FBI agent in the picture behind carrying my bag.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: And I always ask people, can anybody tell me what's kind of strange about this photo?
11:40
SPEAKER_01: But um, but they're very helpful.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, I'll tell you I was impressed.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: But if I needed air, air, air support.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Boom, five minutes, you got air and BI.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: I had to go through paperwork in my own agency.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: I had to do, can I get my super, get the ASAC, get the by the it's too late.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: I'd call FBI.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: You need them?
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they're up.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Or I needed um show money.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: We need we had to do some money for an extortion case, and uh literally the the the gener the the GS, the group supervisor turns in his office, he has a little drawer locked.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: He's got like you know$25,000.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: How much you need?
12:17
SPEAKER_01: We only need like 7,000.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Here you go.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: 7,000 signed right here.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, for DHS to do that, it would take an you know an act of Congress to do it.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: So that's why I like the FBI that way.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: But uh other other we have other issues right now that we're not gonna get into.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: But so so because of the interviews, I said, you know what, I want to do what they do.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah and um and I applied to be a U.S.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: customs special agent.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: I got hired, and then I came in through that weird merger when this uh agency called the Department of Homeland Security was created.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh I was there during the growing pains of DHS, where U.S.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: Customs Special Agents were merged with INS, immigration and naturalization service special agents, and became ICE.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: And and then we went into this identity crisis because when every time you said immigration and nobody heard the rest part of it, well, it was immigration and customs.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh we still did a lot of customs work, and a lot of people don't know what customs what they did.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: We did a lot of money laundering.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: Everything that touched the nexus on the border, we investigated child exploitation, by the way, is a U.S.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: customs uh um jurisdiction, um uh money laundering, bank secrecy act, uh, those types of uh bulk cash smuggling, arms trafficking, everything that's trafficking and smuggling, of course, commercial fraud, um, artifact investigation of uh the missing of uh artifacts and museums.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: We've been able to recover uh incredible parts of that are stolen around the world.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: When I when I worked in Spain, we were recovering an original letter from uh Christopher Columbus from New York trying to get it back to that's cool.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is this is cool stuff, right?
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And then of course you hear the uh IPR, the um the fake Gucci bag and that.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: But when you look at uh counterfeit, a lot of people think of that counterfeit.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: And yes, we do deal with that, but we also deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals, counterfeit toothpaste, counterfeit cotton t-shirts, uh thing that you would never know about that people are trying to get uh these cotton t-shirts, and you put it on and you're allergic to whatever it has in there, it's not 100% cotton.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: So uh there's a lot of fraud coming through those ports of entry.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: So I get in um and I get El Paso.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: I get lucky to go back to El Paso, Texas, and because I'm from there, uh I have a great advantage.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I know the judges, I know the courts, I know the city, I know both Juarez and El Paso, and so the sources and the interviews and all that, it becomes very natural to me um to do my work.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: And of course, it was all narcotics initially.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: You just get into a narcotics conspiracy investigation group and start taking down dope, you know, plenty of it.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: And so I know uh now that we see these huge seizures of fentanyl happening, and I always tell people, listen, the seizures are great, but when you see the record number of seizures go up, we knew that we were getting our asses handed to us.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: When the seizures were down, we were doing a decent job.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: It's not the other way around.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: People think that when the seizures are up, hey, we're taking everything down.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's quite the opposite.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: That means that we're only getting about 10, 15%.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: But because we see the number of seizures increase, that means it's prevalent.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: It's so easy that we're grabbing them and and it's not a good thing.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: And so uh that's what's happening now with the fentanyl and the meth that we see these huge seizures, which I welcome when they're great seizures.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's great, but you can't ignore the fact that we're losing 85% of it coming into the country.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: Easier to catch a fish when the flood gets wet.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: So that's exactly it.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: That's that's the that's the theory behind it.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: And people, it's hard for people to understand that they think that it's the other way around.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I did narcotics and then got thrown.
16:05
SPEAKER_04: Working mostly like sources or wireters.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Wiretabs, sources.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: I did wiretabs, I did source sources, sources, sources, a lot of sources.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: Um uh when you say sources, are you talking about like CIs, confidence?
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay, confidential informants, humant, human intelligence.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes, a lot of it.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: A lot of it, um uh control deliveries.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was fun.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: We're having a lot of fun.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: I can imagine.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: A lot of fun uh on the field, on the field.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: And I I was proud to be a hardworking agent, one that produced, one that liked to be out there and and and actually get some work done and work the sources.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: I used to put a lot of hits on the systems and the like the ports of entry.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: So I go by and drive uh uh what looked to be a stash house, and I had some intelligence or information that could be a possibly a stash house.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: So whatever vehicle was parked there, I put a hit on it.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And I would forget about it.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: I put a hit on it, the special instructions while contact special agent Avila or something at the port of entry, right?
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And then two or three months later I get a call out of the blue and they hated me for this.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Because uh they're like, hey, we got a Volkswagen bug here, it's loaded with 250 pounds of marijuana.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: What yeah, it's a hit here, says contact special agent avila, oh it was a car that was parked at the stash house that I had put in months before.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: So now I have to respond to it.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: It was the it wasn't it was an addition to my regular duty cases.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: So I had to take another agent and they're like, Victor, why'd you keep stop putting these hits?
17:36
SPEAKER_01: But hey, I like working, right?
17:38
SPEAKER_01: I like to work.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we did a lot of that, and then one day out of the blue, about three years into it, I get a notice from my uh supervisor that says you're going to a human smuggling human trafficking group.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Boy man, I went kicking and screaming.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh I didn't know much about the human smuggling, human trafficking, just a little bit about what they had trained us at the academy.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh and then that was kind of seen like the stepchild.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: There was a big conflict between U.S.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Customs and INS.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: The customs people didn't want to do immigration work, the immigration people didn't want to do customs work, and my supervisor says, Victor, you have to learn this.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Just go do it.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh I did, and uh I actually ended up being and leading the the human trafficking task force in El Paso uh and became a subject matter expert in human trafficking.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: They trained me hard for about a year all over the country going to these conferences, and then I started working the cases.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: Now I was out there looking for the exploitation, the the the the women and children that are being trafficked for mostly sexual exploitation.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: I did work some forced labor cases as well, where they'll hire uh mostly an illegal and have them work at their house.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: I had one that worked at a house for years, uh an affluent family, and just had her living in a I call it the basement, but it was like the dungeon.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: And she was responsible for everything in that house to clean it, to cook, to set up the parties with no pay.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: A slave, right?
19:05
SPEAKER_01: A modern-day slavery.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: So I worked those cases and and then and then I did some human smuggling, and then I did the the Border Patrol corruption case.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: When is uh that got me some my name mentioned around the office and uh for for our listeners, we have a lot of non-law enforcement listeners.
19:26
SPEAKER_04: Would you would you share and even with me, not just our listeners, the difference?
19:31
SPEAKER_04: A lot of people think smuggling and trafficking are the same uh exact thing.
19:36
SPEAKER_04: And there is a difference, right?
19:37
SPEAKER_01: It's a huge difference.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for bringing that up because that's one of my pet peeves.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh what you're seeing right now, and I'll compare it to what you see right now the human smuggling uh is versus trafficking.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Smuggling is a one-time venture where you the the person, the illegal pays, in this case, the cartel, to get introduced into the country, and that's the end of that.
19:57
SPEAKER_04: So that's where our listener sees the 18 wheeler with 50 horror.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: That's that's all smuggling.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: That's all smuggling.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: That's none of that is trafficking.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: And you do hear the term trafficking in the news, and it's not.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: It really is not, it's really a completely different crime.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: That's smuggling as horror, horror, horrific as it is, but it's still smuggling, whether it's in the back of a pickup truck or a U-Haul or all this, um, that's smuggling.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: Money paid to uh coyote.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: Once it coyote, once it you're in, it's over.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: The conduct is over.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: The trafficking is the exploitation of that person for continued exploitation, usually for the sex trade or forced labor.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: They have a lot of illegals working at uh at farms um and uh factories, and of course, the the women and children being prostituted against their will.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: And there has to be an element for human trafficking to exist, so you have to have force, fraud, or coercion to exist, unless you're a minor.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: And um, and so those are the cases that I concentrated.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: But I also did a lot of smuggling because you kind of in El Paso, you can't avoid the smuggling.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: We got illegals in hotel rooms all the time.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we did a hit uh a case, and I'll tell you really quickly, we hit a we hit a motel, like 18 illegals.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: We the smuggler was out of uh El Salvador.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't my case, I was just an agent assigned to the group.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're working at uh they're interviewing the the subject, and uh one of the ladies, one of the eagles is in the tank, uh, while Border Patrol would help us process them because we we suck at processing.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: The the special agents, we're supposed to know how, and we do know, but we're slow.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: And so we would call VP to help us uh process, and then this lady tells me uh he has my child.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh in Spanish, she's telling me he has my daughter, and I go up to her and I said, What are you talking about?
21:43
SPEAKER_01: There was no children in the hotel room.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: He says, No, I gave him my daughter, he knows where my daughter's at.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: So I call the guys down and I said, Let's let me let me talk to this guy.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: And we interview him a different tactic and to get a little bit more information.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And sure enough, he gives us an address.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: In El Paso, that same night, we suit up, hit it, and discover 18 kids in this house with four people, four adults that none of them are the next of kin.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: They're including her 18-month-old daughter.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: So then all of a sudden we're like, what the heck?
22:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember clearing, I remember going to the house and get chills because I remember clearing, going into the house, uh, and we go in there and boom, boom, boom, clearing house.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: And then there's a bunch of kids from 18 months to five, six, seven, eight, nine-year-old kids in this really small house.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: And we had cleared it, and I'm, you know, tactics, right?
22:40
SPEAKER_01: And I have my partner, we're going hallway, the hallway, and we at the very last bedroom, we're shouting in spa in Spanish, policia, policia, all this stuff.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And we're thinking it's already clear in our mind, which is not clear until it's clear.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: The last bedroom, there's a lady sitting on the bed with a child, never said a word.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: And I come in already thinking it's cleared when it's not.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And I remember kind of going off and heard and yelling, are you almost got I almost shot you?
23:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're can't you hear us telling police?
23:08
SPEAKER_01: But she was just shocked.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: But um, so now we have to rescue these kids.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: We don't know where their parents are at.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: CPS gets involved.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: They're there so all of the above, the sometimes, and and and I'm gonna bring it to what's happening right now, the parent will give it up to the smuggler willingly.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I never understood that, but they do.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay, sometimes they're taken, sometimes they're taken by force, sometimes they're taken whether they ask you or not, and they'll say, We're gonna we're gonna use the child to get you in.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you'll you'll get in, we'll smuggle you, and then we'll reunite you with a child.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't happen all the time.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: And guess what's happening right now?
23:45
SPEAKER_01: So think of the 18 that we just had that one day.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: This is years ago.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, now times 25,000.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, now you got a problem, a huge problem of of uh detention of facilities.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: These are kids, and so this is what the open border has caused.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And so so I worked those cases.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, then my my Mexico assignment came through there.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: There was uh an opportunity to go work at the U.S.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: consulate in Mexico, uh in Juarez, on the other side of El Paso, Texas.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: And the brand new U.S.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: consulate, this is 2007, 2008, was being built and it wasn't finished yet.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: So ICE was housed with DEA at a private building.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: And the the private building had architects and what is a private building.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Just like a private business.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: Private building business, yeah.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's where ICE and DEA were housed.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: And uh when I started doing doing my TDY there, um one one day there's a dead body in the front of the building with a sign for DEA.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: Like they the bad guys knew that DEA and ICE were housing there.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was all over.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I was there, that city, uh Ciudad Juarez was the most dangerous city in the world with 350 homicides a month.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: A month.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: It it so you're so divide that by 30.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: How many is that uh a day?
25:06
SPEAKER_01: That's over 10 a day, right?
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Murders.
25:09
SPEAKER_03: How many people did Warez have at that point in time population?
25:13
SPEAKER_01: It was it went drastically, dropped from 2 million to like 1.5.
25:17
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they were killing them all, apparently.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, people left.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: They were fleeing.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: A lot of them were fleeing to the U.S.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: and others were fleeing back to the uh Juarez is known for bringing a lot of people because of the of the factory industry there to come and work.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh you have the twin plants and historically, but it was kind of known as the staging area to enter the U.S.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean it it was correct.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: And also uh at that time there was the missing women's.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: There was over 300 missing women, all between the ages of about 16 to 22, and to this day they've never been solved.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: We used to have these big intel meetings to go through the theories of who is taking these women, and they would about how many you think?
25:57
SPEAKER_01: Over 300, and they were find them dead in a in an empty lot in Ciudad Juarez, which they end up giving it a name El Lote Bravo, and you could go dump a body.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: So then it got to the point where if it was the occult, if it was a cartel, if it was a police, if whoever it was that was killing these girls, then it was anybody else.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: If you wanted to get rid of your girlfriend, easy.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: You buy some pay somebody a hundred dollars, they'll kill her and go throw her in that in that desert, and you would never know.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Which still blurs the original investigation.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Which then all of a sudden you have no idea.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, oh my my I got my girlfriend pregnant, my wife's gonna find out, kill her, get rid of her.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: A lot of a lot of those crimes from the U.S.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: will take them to Mexico and and get rid of them there.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so a lot of that was going on in that time, so you can imagine the the intensity of working there.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I would go and and drop off my G Rite at the port of entry.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: They would pick me up in an armed vehicle and then work all day till 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, drop me off at the port of entry and do it all over again.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: And while I was doing that, there was an opportunity to go to the uh U.S.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Embassy to work a case.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: And I had never been to Mexico City, and I asked my boss, hey, let me go.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: I really want to go to Mexico City.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: I'd never been there.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: I had a friend, a really close friend of mine, the DEA agent that was already stationed there.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: And uh I really wanted to go says go go take take care of the of the meeting, and I did, and I got shown around and I fell in love with Mexico City.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: I said, I could do this.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, I told my talked to my wife about possibly coming and moving there, and there was a position, you know, stars aligned in your career sometimes, and and it did.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: The position was open.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: I uh I was offered the position.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: I actually ended up finishing my my temporary uh duty in Mexico City and then uh started the process.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: And before you know it, my family and I move from El Paso, Texas to Mexico City.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: It's like moving from Jefferson to Austin.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: More or less.
27:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: And so it was um cool experience for your initially.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: So it's um uh I I I kid around, I say the 252 reasons why we did it.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of it is I was born and raised in El Paso.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: I uh I didn't get on an airplane until I was 17 years old.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Um never traveled much uh as a kid, never went anywhere but that region.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I didn't want my kids to do that.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: I wanted my kids to see the world, I wanted them to know that there's a world outside of El Paso, Texas.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: And so it was conscious.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my wife was a very successful pharmaceutical sales, she left her job at a at the top of her game.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: And but it wasn't about that.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: We sold our house, we said, let's go do this for a lot of those reasons.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: That's a dedication by your spouse.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I uh I talk about a lot a lot of her in the book, and um, and I wanted that for my kids.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: Financially, you make a little bit more money because, first of all, the the cost of living in Mexico is very affordable.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: I was basically living off of one check instead of two.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my wife eventually started working at the U.S.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Embassy as a background investigator.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: And um, so she completely gave up her career.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she did.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: She she got trained and became a background investigator there at the U.S.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Embassy, working for the State Department as a contractor, uh, which I'll tell you how that comes in uh with the story.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: But what's your wife's name?
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Claudia, Claudia, Claudia.
29:22
SPEAKER_03: Janet Owen, true woman right there, training tips for my wife.
29:26
SPEAKER_03: Read the book, dude.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: You'll you'll you'll you'll you'll read a lot about her and my family in there because when I wrote the book, I I it's it's not like I was it just comes out, right?
29:36
SPEAKER_01: The family because that's phenomenal, they're intricate part of of uh of of my career, basically.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: The you know you guys know in law enforcement, you miss a lot of birthdays, you miss a lot of events, uh, you're not there.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: And so she understood what I didn't know is that my career in Mexico was going to be the the most I ever worked in my life.
29:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you talk about not being home.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes two or three days out of the month, I was home.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's I was traveling a lot.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: I was uh taking down a lot of human traffickers, uh drug traffickers.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh I was in charge of the Global Trafficking in Persons Initiative, uh, money laundering, looking for fugitives, man, you name it.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were doing some some good work in Mexico, which unfortunately that coordination between the Mexican government and U.S.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: right now doesn't exist anymore.
30:26
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, back then we had a lot of uh uh free access to to the government.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I flew with uh the uh deputy attorney general and the attorney general of Mexico to Washington, D.C.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: and for these meetings and and coordinations.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: They were passing uh a federal human trafficking law back then, so we helped them with that.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to get these cases arrested.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: We did.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they had Mexico has a lot of human traffickers bringing a lot of the victims to the U.S.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: and exploiting them in New York, Houston, all over the U.S., Miami.
30:56
SPEAKER_03: So I would I'm my wife would not won't let me let this down if I don't ask this question.
31:02
SPEAKER_03: She's got a uh Hispanic background.
31:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh her family's from Chihuahua.
31:06
SPEAKER_03: And so how different was the culture from El Paso to Mexico City?
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Completely different.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: Completely different.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: And and my family's from Chihuahua, my mom's side of the family's there, and it's um the food is different.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it's great.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: And what what I loved about my family is that we were able to assimilate and and acclimate to that.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Um the embassies still serve lunch at 11:30 or 12, like they do here in the US, but no one ate lunch at that time.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: There were still people fighting that and would want to have lunch at 12, but lunch in Mexico is at 2 o'clock and it goes for three, four hours.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh I mean it I mean these meetings that you want to go have lunch?
31:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it starts at 2 or 3 and I'd be home at 8.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: That was lunch.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: With drinks.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe, maybe nobody knows.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh but but so it was an enormous amount of work.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what we had, the the investigations we had going on the ground there, plus the collateral duties.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I started working very closely with New York.
32:06
SPEAKER_01: New York all of a sudden uh was very they were happy because uh they had a lot of human trafficking cases linked to Mexico.
32:13
SPEAKER_01: And was that because of the sweatshops and the industry?
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and a lot of uh a lot of the prostitution, a lot.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh also Chinese smuggling cases for forced labor.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: And uh when I came in, um I paid attention to them.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: I said, let's work these cases, and they're like, oh well, we've been trying to get somebody in Mexico to listen to us.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: So before you know it, I was working a lot of cases with New York, and we started taking some good cases down.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: We did a great Chinese smuggling case from China, Mexico to New York, took the organizations in Mexico and New York down almost simultaneously.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: It was it was a lot of good work, but it neglected my family.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I talk about it in the book where it's hard for me to out.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: I hated the fact that I neglected the family, but I still love going to work at the same time.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: And it was a weird feeling because even when I was home, I wasn't really there.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: I was on the phone all the time.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Text, email, uh well, maybe not text, I don't know what Blackberry, whatever it was back then.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, a lot of push to talk radio.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: And um uh and so that really occupied my time.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: I missed a lot of what my kids did in Mexico.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, my wife, if I was gonna be home for a weekend and I said, What do you got this week?
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I have nothing.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: I want to do nothing.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: She's not, we're going to the beach.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: And she would force it.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: She'd book something to uh one of the beaches and said, Let's just go spend two days over there to decompress.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm glad that we were able to do that because if not, I would have done nothing in Mexico um other than just work.
33:37
SPEAKER_04: Well, and when you're hitting licks like you were and knocking down big cases, it's a little addictive.
33:42
SPEAKER_04: Very hard and you want to get another lick after you get a big takedown or a big bust.
33:48
SPEAKER_04: That adrenaline gets a little bit addictive, and you can get not intentionally um not taking care of your family, but you can you can accidentally get pretty addicted to the adrenaline rush of getting a big lick here.
34:02
SPEAKER_04: We just took down this group, we just seize this much money or something.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: I remember even your body um uh reacts to that.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: I I I I was on very little sleep all this time, four or five hours, six hours sleep was great night for me.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm a sleeper, I love to sleep, and and your body gets used to that that that type of uh um you know cycle.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: And um, but we I I I I I loved it.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: I still did.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: I one of the times we came back from Cancun, we literally landed at at the airport in Mexico City.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: My family went to went to our apartment and I went to the police department, to their federal police headquarters to take down a guy and didn't get back home until two days later.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, stuff like that would happen all the time.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And um and so that that was the the course, right?
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh in Mexico City.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: This is now 2009, 2010, and then going into 2011, I had promised my wife I'm gonna try to slow it down, especially with the trip.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: She already had got to a point, all right, that's enough.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one thing is to be comprehensive and and and supportive, but uh she's like, what's going on?
35:09
SPEAKER_01: Now now we're at a different phase here where your kids don't even recognize you.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: My kids used to ask me, What are you doing here?
35:15
SPEAKER_01: What are you doing at home, dad?
35:16
SPEAKER_04: Oh, gosh.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't feel good when your kids ask you, What are you doing there?
35:20
SPEAKER_01: And uh and I said, Okay, I'm gonna do everything I can, stop traveling.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't travel because I want people to say, always traveling is having a good time.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: No, it's because the cases would take you there, right?
35:31
SPEAKER_01: Central America and US and uh South America.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but it almost seems like I did it on purpose because 2011 came across and I was all over the place.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: I went to Denver, New York, Guatemala, Panama, and my wife's like, All right, are you doing this on purpose?
35:46
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm not, I'm not.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: I promise you, I it it's just it almost seems like this is what slowing down looks like, really issue.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: It was hard to uh so I started gaining a lot of the pressure at home.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and um, and then February 15th comes around, and so I'll tell you the story.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh the week before the shooting, the shooting happened on Tuesday, February 15th, 2011.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: The week before, I was in Denver, I was working a uh Afghan smuggling case.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh a group pause two seconds.
36:17
SPEAKER_04: Sure.
36:18
SPEAKER_04: So you've mentioned Afghan smuggling, China.
36:23
SPEAKER_04: Again, speaking to our listeners that are are not law enforcement, you know, a lot of times, and we've talked about it um earlier in the episode with a Border Patrol agent, but it's so important in the political climate now, and the news only reports the version that they want.
36:39
SPEAKER_04: Um a lot of people think that immigration is people coming over to get a better life, or you know, seasonally to um work in one crops and it's so much and then it's just South Americans, right?
36:57
SPEAKER_04: It's so much bigger than that, and it's not just Mexicans either.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's another thing you just hear, well, it's just Mexicans and Central Americans.
37:03
SPEAKER_04: But it's you've mentioned China and and um I I heard a statistic and it may have been from one of our guests that last year alone there was 160 different countries were identified crossing the border, whether it's Russians, Chinese, North Koreans.
37:20
SPEAKER_04: They're not coming here to Well, that's the problem.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what they're coming here for.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: And we call them SIA special interest aliens, because I interviewed them at the detention facilities in Mexico City, people from Bangladesh, Somalia, Yemen.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, what the hell are you doing in Mexico?
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Because they knew that if they were in Mexico, they're as good as being in the U.S.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: It was a matter of just spending time there because the Mexican government is so corrupt.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: They would release them, which they're still doing now, release them with their immigration pass to travel within the country of Mexico and says you have to leave within 30 days.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, of course they're going to the northern border to our to our country.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: They're not going back to uh Central America or the other way.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: They're coming, they're coming back here.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and so they that threat has always been there.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about terrorism threat.
38:07
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, but people from Iran and Russia aren't coming here to pick cantaloupe.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: They're not no no no and and and those interviews with uh and I used to have the uh translators, it was very difficult.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm a I'm I'm a decent interrogator, and I could never get anything out of them.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: Once in a while they would tell me they're going to New York, that's it.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: We didn't even know their true identity.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: We started doing um uh iris scanning down in in in Guatemala and Panama and teaching them down there so when they came to Central America to Mexico, we would know the identity because they would have one identity down there, one in Mexico, and then one in the northern border, three different identities.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: We had no idea.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: By the way, their all their birthdays was one one different year, one one eighty, one one ninety, you know, one one ninety something.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh and so yeah, that's the threat.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: That was uh and that's been happening for years.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: So now we've caught them on the no-fly list.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: We've had over 200 in the last two years that we know about, and you're absolutely right.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what they want, we don't know if they're forming cells within our our country, and and this is what the big national security issue is it's beyond that just the illegal immigration, and it's not just uh the Mexican Central Americans because those are the ones that get the most coverage.
39:21
SPEAKER_04: And if if an American goes somewhere else to another country, they have to do it legally.
39:26
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
39:27
SPEAKER_04: They have to assimilate, and they have to do it the right way.
39:31
SPEAKER_04: And and we're not being insane by saying, just come here legally, uh and I'm all for it.
39:38
SPEAKER_04: You know, provide the concept of why you're coming.
39:40
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I sidetracked you.
39:41
SPEAKER_04: Let's go to February.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: No, but but but I'm all for the legal immigration, and I'll say now I'm all for it.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: I want people to come here legally, and what's happening now is not happening.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: So we get we get back.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm doing that Afghan case, um Denver source.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was going really good.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: And it happened to be in Tucson, Arizona, the Thursday before, about four hours from El Paso.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: And I turned in the car, rented my own car, and drove to El Paso, surprised my parents, and I spend that weekend, that long weekend, uh, with my family and and friends and and and all my family there in El Paso, uh, which is kind of eerie.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like now that I go look back, it was crazy the people that I saw, and I was kind of almost saying goodbye to them.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, I get back to Mexico City Sunday night, Monday morning, like at one in the morning, uh, which is Valentine's Day, February 14th.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: I go to the office around nine Monday morning, and my whole intention was to just stay in the office a whole week and do this thing called reports, because everything that we do, we have to write it down.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: And I had a lot of administrative work to do, a lot of admin stuff.
40:50
SPEAKER_04: And I've non-sexy side of long.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that people don't, don't, don't, uh, you never see that uh a lot in the in the movies, but everything that we do, we have to write it down, and I had a lot of reports to do, and and I had a I still have it there in my home office, the what I wrote down, things, the things to do list.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm a big writer of lists, and I have this long list of things to do.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: And around noon, one of my uh co-workers tells me, hey, heads up, they're gonna send you to Monterey.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: And it flipped my top, man.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?
41:18
SPEAKER_01: I just got here, man.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: What why are they sending me?
41:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: They just I heard your name in the morning meeting that they're gonna send you and the TD wire.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: They refer to Agent Zapata as a TD wire because Agent Zapata had just arrived the week before from the Laredo office working an arms trafficking case, and we had agents rotating that case on a 30, 60, 90 day TDY, uh temporary duty.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: And Jaime had just come in to replace another agent.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: And I said, All right, well, we'll see.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: And so we went to lunch, two o'clock, come back about three, and sure enough, my supervisor calls me and tells me, Yeah, I need you to go to Monterey and pick up some equipment from our ICE counterparts from the ICE office.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna meet you and you're gonna pick up some equipment from them and bring it back.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: And I said, on like driving?
42:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you gotta understand, we had all this intel that prohibited us from driving on Highway 57.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: The U.S.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: ambassador had sent out an alert prohibiting anyone, any U.S.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: personnel from driving on that road for personal reasons or business reasons.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: You just couldn't be on there because we knew that the Zetas controlled that corridor.
42:24
SPEAKER_04: How far for a visual, how far is Mexico City to Monterey?
42:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh, about a 10-hour drive.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: So it's far.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: It's far.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we I drove that highway many, many times.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: It's called highway, but it's think of it uh an interstate, right?
42:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's the toll road, supposed to be the safe road.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: And we drove that many times.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: That's how we escorted people out and their families.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: Um that's where we would.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: It's like 35, smaller than that, or kind of 35.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: Like 35, like 35, you know, two and two.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh and you touched on this before, but in Mexico, uh, you know, armored vehicles are like Toyota Cameries.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes, they're there are damages in over there.
43:01
SPEAKER_03: And so, what would that look like on a typical day for you to drive in Mexico, kind of walk through that process?
43:07
SPEAKER_01: In Mexico City, armored vehicles are very prevalent.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: It is not a big deal.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: You see uh details of secure details all the time.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Business people who know who knows who they are, but they have a secure detail.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: They'll have a leak vehicle, they'll have them in an armored vehicle, and then they'll have a security vehicle behind.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: You see that all the time.
43:25
SPEAKER_04: Full armored convoys.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: Full armored convoys.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh and they're not politicians, they're not, they're just business people with money, but they don't want to be kidnapped.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Daily, several times a day, daily, everywhere.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: That's normal.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, they have they have armored vehicle dealerships there, um, you know, escalades and real high end cars.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: We had just received these 2009 suburbans, really nice, uh, well made uh armored vehicles, and they were personally assigned to us.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: But the big difference from the states versus in Mexico is they wanted us in the G Write.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: You had to put your family in there every time you rode on there.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: So we used our G Write as our personal vehicle as well that was allowed there because of the safety.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Not cartel.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about just crime in general in in Mexico City.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: So you won't get car uh cart jacked in a red light or somebody try to you know gain gain access to you or kidnap you.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: Because that happens a lot.
44:17
SPEAKER_04: So when you and your wife and kids roll to dinner y'all would be in an armor vehicle.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: In an armored vehicle.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: And um it that's that's just the it's normal right and and it shouldn't be normal.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: That's that's not uh because that's not known here in the US that's uh when you see armored vehicles you see uh a politician being escorted or something uh right uh a dignitary or something there it's just uh regular people and and us I mean we were diplomats but uh they wanted us in those armored vehicles and um and so the uh the assignment comes in I challenge it I say wait a minute I've been hearing all this and I get with the assistant at a check out of Monterey our IS office over there call them and he says yeah man they're having these scrimmages on the on the highway the Zetas are having firefights with the Mexican police and the Mexican military and I said why the hell aren't we flying whatever they want let's just send it by a helicopter or send it by uh diplomatic pouch which is a basically a U-Haul truck where we get our mail and it's not secure in a sense it's just it's protected by diplomatic immunity so if some they can't search it nobody could search it and and they send it that way.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: All that was denied and they said you got to keep in mind I was never briefed and this had been on ongoing since December and I never I was never part of the preview to the emails I was never I just was brought in at the very last minute and you know that's very wrong in law enforcement you I wasn't part of the operational plan.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: There was no operational plan.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: So on a typical op like this there was tip there would be days of operational planning you would be a part of it from day one multiple briefs multiple planning multiple vehicles involved and none of this shit is going on at minimum at minimum I tell you because I did it many many times especially on that highway um either Mexican Federal Police Mexican military both sometimes uh armored vehicles two or three US personnel and then whatever we had you know we had a convoy of five six vehicles every single time so when they tell you at three o'clock in the afternoon you're gonna leave tomorrow morning wait a minute even if I wanted to even if I wanted to arrange is I don't have enough time to do it then they didn't allot me that time and so I had my supervisor go into the office they were behind closed doors and asked the deputy attache who we nicknamed my friend nicknamed it Blue52 because he looks like paid manning um literally looks like paid manning 6'5 and so he named him Blue52 and I said hey go tell Blue 52 all this intel right and I write about it because I'll never forget this it's a very small office and I'm literally standing five feet from the door my supervisor there he knocks on the door blue 52 comes out and my supervisor tells him hey this is what's going on we're talking to so and so in Monterey and his words were I'm not I'm not aware of any security concerns in Mexico well the whole fucking country of Mexico is a security threat.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah not aware of it.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
47:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean And are you not getting the same emails and alerts that I am their boss right right and it's been ignored all the all the through the ambassador of the regional security office and he says I need that equipment by close of business day tomorrow turns around and goes into the office and closes the door my supervisor looks at me and says kind of shrugs his shoulders says all right you gotta make arrangements man so I do I at that point I'm ordered I I uh I get with Jaime Zapata I meet Jaime for the first time uh hit it off exchange numbers we have to push to talk next to L radios remember those I like that I love those and those were our lifelines I love those and I had a box full of uh like disposable ones so I said I'll give you a clean one if you says no I have the one from work from Laredo which we exchanged the code to get it working and uh I said come to my uh apartment 6 30 tomorrow morning and we'll take off and uh I call the guys from Monterey I said all right it's a 10 hour you drive seven hours I'll drive three they're like no you drive seven so we're trying to make a uh arrangements to to where to meet and um Jaime gets there 6 30 in the morning February 15th I write a whole section about February 14th on there which to me was a very special day because it ruined my the plans with my wife and my wife remember I'm already at tense at home and my wife had this whole thing at our favorite sushi restaurant she had it all set up and I I I called her and I said I can't I gotta stay and work because I had all this stuff to do now I have to work this and she was very upset so what she did is she called all the food over to be taken over to the house and my kids acted like the waiter and servers.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: It was awesome man it was an incredible experience so um I take off the next morning I say my son was still asleep I I kiss my daughter goodbye and she sees that I'm not wearing a suit because I'm in and I'm in a polo shirt and jeans and she says are you going out of town I said no no I'm going to the office and I lied to her and she says no you're not wearing a suit you always wear a suit when you go to the office and uh and I said no I'm gonna be back today I didn't want her to know or think that I was going to be gone again and my whole intention was to be back the same day.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: So we take off Jaime gets there we take off we're we're driving I have my backpack and in my backpack I have my two issued guns my Glock 19 and my Sig uh 229 and I told Jaime I had them behind I'm driving and I have them right here below right here next to me and I I even told Jaime the first stop that we did at the because these are gas guzzlers these these uh um suburbans weigh about almost six tons and they guzzle gas like crazy and so we have to stop every time we have to the opportunity to fill up and we do at the first gas station we're already out out on highway 57 and it was real early in the morning we gas up uh I said you want anything to eat and says no and I that's the first time I told mate by the way and this is the way I said I by if the shit hits the fan I got my two uh guns right here so okay by looking at these vehicles is it obvious that you guys are federalis or like I mean is it obvious that the yes yes the vehicle is very obvious so now outside of the city is very obvious this vehicle looks different and you're all by yourself or by yourselves uh this vehicle looks like armored it looks different it looks the windows are the the the braces or the what do you the trim so the zet's different so the Zets are gonna know that if something is up you're either a dictator a politician something's up with this they know we're on that road let me tell you right now before we even go further they know that we're on that road they knew we were on that road I don't know who told them we were on the road but they knew their intel might have told them they control it they control it so well and this is why I talk a lot about the cartels are highly sophisticated highly sophisticated they have intel uh more sometimes more than the police and they got lookouts everywhere they knew that we were driving on that highway even on the way back remember we crossed their their area and they did the exchange around 1130 in the morning which was the uh our our my suburban was blue theirs was gold in color we exchanged the the box a bunch of boxes we throw them in the back there was a little restaurant there I asked Jaime do you want to eat here it was about 1130 the lady said she would make us some food he says no I want to eat at the subway that we passed by there which is a subway that uh kind of like a truck stop area where there's a church's chicken a subway and he's like church's chicken I said yeah this is you have the everything you have in the US just a little different uh but uh he says I want some subway I said I will eat subway and um we did the exchange used the restroom and then we literally headed right back and I'm still driving um and something I didn't tell you guys last time when this is the very first feeling when we're driving probably maybe another maybe less than an hour and all of a sudden traffic's changed we're heading back south and in the middle of the median it's a two-lane highway north two lane south we're going south in the median there's a federal police officer in a marked unit think of him as a Texas DPS trooper right with a long gun outside standing in a three quarter position just scanning scanning traffic so think of yourself driving on I-35 or wherever you live I-20 I whatever and you see a police officer doing that you're gonna slow down you're gonna see like what's going on well not only us but other people on the on we're not the only ones you know what people are like what the hell is this guy doing and let me tell you it's scared it scared the living shit out of me man when I passed by him because I didn't understand what was going on I have been through many detentions checkpoints legal illegal cartels police military you learn to navigate through those you learn to communicate and identify yourself and approach and that was it I was aw this guy was by himself it was off it was weird and we slow down and I see him and he's looking at us and we just kind of continue on and looking at him through the side mirrors and I even told Jaime I said what the the hell is that guy doing there man I I couldn't understand it and when you know when you don't you you don't have a grasp of he's not a checkpoint you made eye contact did he follow you whenever you drove up he was following the car it was kind of he was doing even doing this with his M4.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: It's weird very weird very strange and we're like um and I said you're scared man I said yeah I said me too man that was it scared me so kind of forgot about him forgot about him and got to the subway um which I'm very familiar with gas up there have clean bathrooms we ate outside it was beautiful it was 72 degrees on February 15th and I told Jaime this is one of the perks of uh of living down here is beautiful weather uh I told him it's the San Diego weather uh talked a lot about he he shared throughout the whole time him and I really connected and uh he gave me his whole story and his life and his uh fiance and all the plans he wanted to come to Mexico I told him he got a brush up on your Spanish and uh really I I really uh saw myself in him because I saw an agent that was working he got a couple uh he got a call for a seizure one of his I said this is my kind of guy he's a working agent um and he really wanted to do something different here younger than you older than you younger than me I was about six years older than him um but uh you know in the law enforcement that's a lot of difference and experience and so I told him how I did my my my career path and what I was planning and and we really hit it off uh big big fisherman barbecue guy from South Texas and very likable guy and now every everybody I talked to is he was very very liked by a lot of his colleagues and his family and friends um and so we get off I throw him I literally throw him the key I said all right man you're trying to help me drive I'm gonna get on the Blackberry I was getting um I was finishing up a human trafficking conference uh looking for a fugitive and I said I'm gonna take advantage while you're driving and get some of this work done I called the supervisor and gave him our 20 our location I said we'll be hitting Mexico City about 7 o'clock p.m which is rush hour in Mexico between 7 and 9 and I told Jaiman when you get into the city in the outskirts I'll let you pull over man because he had never driven a more uh uh an armored vehicle had never driven in Mexico City and I was I wasn't gonna do that to you I'll take the car from there because it's the nightmare nightmare uh traffic in Mexico City well and imagine at six tons that vehicle handles quite different very different it accelerates differently it breaks takes a lot longer to break it it uh it's just the handling I said the open road actually will give you better uh uh you know training that we had no training that was the training was by fire that's the keys could figure out how to go that that's how I got it I mean the uh now they're now you have to go through mandatory training now a lot of things have changed so we get to um he's driving for about maybe not only maybe less than 20 minutes not less than half hour when two SUVs pass us at a high rate of speed and um he gives me the heads up and say check it out and I look up and the second SUV has a long gun so you could see it sticking from the middle of the seat.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Tune in next week for part two force off to the right shoulder and we come to a complete stop and about eight of them come out and do a semicircle in front of us uh of the suburban with long guns.
56:39
SPEAKER_02: Where Victor shares that this journey is not about revenge but a reckoning.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: So I call the senators I call the congressmen I call everybody that I know said we gotta do something about it and we we changed the law we said we this cannot happen.
57:40
SPEAKER_05: From where are you still