← The Hidden Third
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- [00:00]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [00:42]
Interviewer
My guest today is Eric Ballier, 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 rates. Eric Ballier, welcome to the Hidden Third.
- [01:21]
Eric Ballier
Thank you very much for having me.
- [01:23]
Interviewer
Tell me a little bit about growing up and how that led to law enforcement.
- [01:26]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, I grew up in a suburb of Syracuse, NY called Baldwinsville. 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. 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, this is cold. I'm not sitting behind a desk. I'm not in a mundane 9 to 5 job. I was still in high school, so I needed to still figure some life decisions out at that point.
- [02:27]
Interviewer
That's so interesting. So do you think that if that neighbor didn't exist, you wouldn't have ended up in law enforcement?
- [02:32]
Eric Ballier
I think he was a catalyst to the decision. I think Ultimately I would have arrived at the same decision. It just put the sea. Planted the seed early in, 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.
- [02:52]
Interviewer
And then you went to college.
- [02:53]
Eric Ballier
And then I went to college.
- [02:55]
Interviewer
And then you left college. Were you a good student in college?
- [02:58]
Eric Ballier
I was not a good student also either. No. I, I grew up in a very conservative household. 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 were no, there was no oversight. There was no like people checking in and stuff and made some dumb, dumb decisions early. I ended up.
- [03:24]
Interviewer
Tell me about the dumb decisions.
- [03:26]
Eric Ballier
Everything from, you know, staying up all hours, not taking, not taking class seriously. I took the minimum credits needed to stay enrolled as a full time student. I remember the. Living in the dorms my freshman year. You couldn't have like a keg or any sort of like multi beverage 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 like disciplinary review board. You know, being the maybe 19 years, 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, yeah, I had a rager party. My mom got the, 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.
- [04:29]
Interviewer
You just drinking and partying.
- [04:30]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. I did not take for the first three years of my college career, I didn't take seriously.
- [04:34]
Interviewer
Did you not, did you think. Were you, did you have a career path in mind at this time? Were you, were you ambitious at all? Did you think that. Who cares what happens after this?
- [04:43]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, it just seems so far down the line when you're, 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, 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.
- [05:10]
Interviewer
Did you have fun?
- [05:11]
Eric Ballier
I had a Blast. Yeah, it was awesome. But at some point you have to grow up.
- [05:16]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [05:16]
Eric Ballier
And my senior year I interned with the New York State Police and that, that's when I really started getting serious. It was a year long program. It was divided up between like patrol admin, CID Criminal investigative Division, and then like some of their specialty units, bomb squads, canine stuff like that. And like at that point was when I was like, yeah, this is, this is what I want to do.
- [05:46]
Interviewer
And then was it hard to then get in?
- [05:48]
Eric Ballier
I had some explaining to do from the. Because, because previous two years I didn't get a record. Not record, the dumb stuff. Right. So. And they had, 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 US Border Patrol, of all places, and they offered me a job in Nogales, Arizona in the spring of 99.
- [06:23]
Interviewer
Oh, so you actually never worked for the state Police you interned with. You didn't actually get a job?
- [06:28]
Eric Ballier
Correct. Yeah.
- [06:29]
Interviewer
And so you started in border patrol. This was what, year before nine? Eleven. Right?
- [06:33]
Eric Ballier
This was. Yeah, 99. Summer of 99.
- [06:35]
Interviewer
Okay. And it would, what was that like? You're 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.
- [06:45]
Eric Ballier
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 rock, 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, to the border. It's about an hour drive. Like it's, it's, 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 US Mexico border. And as you come over one of the hills on, on i19, you can see in the, in the backdrop like this black line that kind of snakes across the horizon and that Was that. Was the border fence back then?
- [07:41]
Interviewer
And then. So you arrived. It's beautiful.
- [07:43]
Eric Ballier
It is a beautiful part of the. Yep, absolutely.
- [07:46]
Interviewer
And so you arrived and then did you have to go through training or.
- [07:50]
Eric Ballier
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 I think we graduated. Like, right before Christmas of 99. Yeah.
- [08:14]
Interviewer
And what were some of the first things first operations?
- [08:17]
Eric Ballier
You involved or at the academy?
- [08:19]
Interviewer
No, after.
- [08:20]
Eric Ballier
Oh. So came back. Coming out, it was like I was full of piss and vinegar. And it was like, all right, let's. Let's get after. Like I was 22. Like, I'm like, I want to get.
- [08:32]
Interviewer
Into some stuff full of piss and vinegar. What is that? That means just, like, full?
- [08:35]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, just like. Like, ye. I wanted to get out. I wanted to, like, chase drug traffickers and human smugglers and all that sort.
- [08:43]
Interviewer
Of stuff and go after the bad guys.
- [08:44]
Eric Ballier
I'll go after the bad guys 100%. And the field training officers were like, pump the brakes for a minute. Like it. There's more to it than. Than that. I remember the first human smuggling load. I was with a field training officer named Terry, and we were sitting in his. In his Chevy Tahoe overlooking a stretch of Interstate 19. And he was like, hey, I'm gonna take a nap, but 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 gonna be. It's gonna be a human smuggly 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. Shit. Here comes this dust trail. And I kind of nudged him, and I'm like, hey, I think. I think there's a truck or something coming out of this little, like, ranch road. So he kind of just like, stretches, very nonchalant. He's like, all right, well, just tell me when you see it. When he hits the. The frontage road to go north. And that's. That's one of the ways they Circumvented the Interstate 19 checkpoint. So I'm. I'm looking at the binos and the binoculars. The binoculars, Yep. Here comes this little tan Chevy S10. And it hits the. 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, all right, I want you to look in the bed. And I'm like, okay. And he pulls up alongside, and I. 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 see. Saying, like, I see a lot of feet, sir. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna light it. I'm gonna 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 in, you know, on my ride alongs with. With my neighbor, everybody stopped. When I was doing all the traffic stops with the New York State Police troopers, like, they always stopped, right? So I'm like, what is he talking about, bail?
- [10:41]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [10:41]
Eric Ballier
So he turned on. 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. Ditched into the desert. And then the doors open. People jumped out of the bed. Just people running.
- [10:58]
Interviewer
How many people were there?
- [10:59]
Eric Ballier
There's probably 15.
- [11:01]
Interviewer
12 to 15. Mostly men. Men.
- [11:03]
Eric Ballier
Men. Men and women. I don't remember any kids on that one. And I. I just remember thinking, like, okay, grab two. And he was going to try to find. He was gonna get the driver.
- [11:12]
Interviewer
Right.
- [11:12]
Eric Ballier
And then for prosecution purposes, you need at least two material witnesses. So my job was. Oh, that's why my job was.
- [11:19]
Interviewer
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 is.
- [11:27]
Eric Ballier
My job was to get two. I got my two. Terry didn't get the driver.
- [11:31]
Interviewer
Oh, no.
- [11:32]
Eric Ballier
But that's okay.
- [11:32]
Interviewer
I don't what happened to those two.
- [11:35]
Eric Ballier
Back then, it was. 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. 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.
- [11:57]
Interviewer
Did you have any situation where it got dangerous while you were doing some of these operations, trying to find some human traffickers?
- [12:04]
Eric Ballier
So it was like. There's always that sense of looking back on it. Yeah. I don't think you realize it at the time, because it's exhilarating. It's fun. It's what you. 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.
- [12:27]
Interviewer
Right.
- [12:28]
Eric Ballier
Until. Until, like, one day I was turning on the. They have these stadium lights along the border fence, so they illuminate the US Side of the fence, and there's kind of the sodium lights that you see in both ball stadiums and stuff like that. But at dusk, you gotta start them, and it's right. I mean, I'm talking probably like 10, 15 yards to the. To the fence. And when you're trying to turn on those lights, you're focused on, you know, 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. And you're like, what is that? And it's. It's people from the south side throwing rocks. Oh. And at dusk, you really can't see them, but you can hear them as they, like, sail by or they'll. They'll hit a car behind you or bounce off the. Off the pavement. And that's where it's kind of like, oh, shit. Like. Yeah.
- [13:22]
Interviewer
Did that happen quite often?
- [13:23]
Eric Ballier
Happened more times than. Yeah, it happened a lot.
- [13:26]
Interviewer
And did a lot of officers get hurt during those times?
- [13:30]
Eric Ballier
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. 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. 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.
- [14:08]
Interviewer
Yeah, because you guys weren't going there. You didn't have helmets at the time. It's not like the ice agents that we're seeing right now up in the streets of America. Right. You guys had a baseball hat, right? Yeah, it's. Yeah, I. 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 an somehow investigating this? I'm not sure, but the. 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. 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.
- [14:46]
Eric Ballier
I do remember that.
- [14:47]
Interviewer
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.
- [15:07]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, I mean, it's. 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, you know, 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. And 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.
- [15:42]
Interviewer
But you guys wouldn't be trained to shoot back.
- [15:45]
Eric Ballier
You would have to have a. So it would be considered a deadly force. So, like rock rocking incidents were. We were trained that that is a deadly force.
- [15:55]
Interviewer
So in that case, you would probably be.
- [15:57]
Eric Ballier
But you have to. Only the. Only the individual can make that. Every situation is different. Right. So while I was like, oh, I'm getting rocked. I can't see who's. 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, you know, disperse whoever's doing it. So there were shootings involving with rockings. A lot of them were when, like, 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.
- [16:48]
Interviewer
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. These. That these agents were in, you know, indiscriminately killing, you know, teenage Mexican kids across the border. And now we're talking about what's happening here in the United States. 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. That would happen quite often, that you guys would be. Have rocks thrown at you guys from across.
- [17:22]
Eric Ballier
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 know, they. 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. It was always like, around that. That dusk time when stuff got kind of gnarly.
- [18:00]
Interviewer
How. How long did you have this job for?
- [18:02]
Eric Ballier
I was in the border patrol. I left the border patrol in September of 2001. So just over two years.
- [18:08]
Interviewer
And you left. So, okay, and during that time. So you were there for two years, and it was. Was it mostly Mexican migrants or who were you guys catching?
- [18:17]
Eric Ballier
The vast majority were Mexican migrants. There was a portion that were, like, back then, they would call them, like, OTMs, like, other than Mexicans, so Central Americans, like, from Guatemala, you know, Ecuador, Honduras, places like that. But the vast majority were either family units or single adult males coming from Mexico.
- [18:42]
Interviewer
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?
- [18:51]
Eric Ballier
Not that. Not that I encountered.
- [18:53]
Interviewer
Not at that time with you.
- [18:54]
Eric Ballier
I mean, yeah, most of. The. Most of the time they would. They would run and, you know, you would, you know, you would chase and you would try to apprehend who you could. And, you know, there's a. But there's also that sense of humanity, right? So, like, if you're out in the middle of nowhere, Southern Arizona, especially in the summer, you're pushing 100 degrees, like, you're making sure, like, people. You're offering water or like, if someone, like, fell and, like, broke their ankle or something like that at night, like, 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 sort.
- [19:31]
Interviewer
Of militias at the time on the border?
- [19:34]
Eric Ballier
The militia phenomenon came later, a little bit later, kind of in like the 2000, maybe 2005, they started showing up and then definitely between like 2006, 2010, right? Yeah.
- [19:47]
Interviewer
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?
- [19:56]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [19:58]
Interviewer
I don't think most people know how or why the Department of Homeland Security was created.
- [20:03]
Eric Ballier
Some of us still. Some of us still wonder. My first day in the off in the Tucson field office was September 10th of 2001.
- [20:12]
Interviewer
And it had just been created.
- [20:13]
Eric Ballier
It hadn't even been created. So it was my first day was the day before 9, 11.
- [20:19]
Interviewer
Oh, your first day was the day before 11. Okay. So you just. Special Agent within.
- [20:25]
Eric Ballier
So it was the Treasury Department at the time. The 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, hey, just he'll get you tomorrow. We'll get you sworn in tomorrow.
- [20:48]
Interviewer
And then it was 9 11.
- [20:49]
Eric Ballier
It was 9 11. Yeah.
- [20:51]
Interviewer
And what happened after that?
- [20:54]
Eric Ballier
I remember going to the office that morning, actually. I remember getting. I was putting on my tie and was draped over my neck and I had the TV on and you could see the, the smoke billing out, billowing out of the, the World Trade Tower. And you know, it was obvious like something bad happened. And then the news crew, it was shot. It was that scene from a helicopter. And then you just see kind of this plane coming across the horizon and you, 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 the, 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, all that sort of stuff, Right.
- [21:35]
Interviewer
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? Because then you suddenly are sort of were transferred or your depart the department you work with, then the agency you work within gets sort of put into a new.
- [21:52]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, exactly. So you know that all 2001 happens. I. I heard 9, 11 happens. I spend. 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 FLETC 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, like, what is happening?
- [22:25]
Interviewer
It's like a war zone.
- [22:26]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. Graduate the academy and then 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.
- [22:51]
Interviewer
And the idea behind it is because nobody saw, or almost no one saw nine, 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 are tasked with protecting the homeland together under this big umbrella. Right. So it includes Border Patrol, ICE as we know it nowadays, tsa, fema, Secret Services. Right. It became sort of mushroom into a gigantic agency.
- [23:26]
Eric Ballier
Yes.
- [23:27]
Interviewer
That didn't. Or department, actually. That didn't exist before.
- [23:29]
Eric Ballier
Correct.
- [23:30]
Interviewer
How was it when you were there at the beginning, how did you see that transformation and how did it affect you?
- [23:35]
Eric Ballier
It was a. It was a. It was a mess.
- [23:37]
Interviewer
Was it?
- [23:38]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, it was a complete show to the point where, and I understand now looking back, the massive restructuring, I think is probably the largest restructuring 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. We had it back. 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 special agents, which was Immigration Naturalization Service, with the 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. Now I'm back dealing with, you know, illegal aliens and, 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 it. Like it was. There were a lot of growing pains.
- [25:12]
Interviewer
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.
- [25:20]
Eric Ballier
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, and digest if it made structural and organizational sense to, to put it together the way that it is today.
- [25:59]
Interviewer
And a lot of people are asking the same questions right now. Right.
- [26:02]
Eric Ballier
It's 2020, what, 23 years later.
- [26:05]
Interviewer
Yeah. And then is this when the hiring surge started?
- [26:10]
Eric Ballier
So, yes. So the hiring surge, the post 911 hiring surgeon, really started in the Border Patrol. So the Border Patrol was given a ton of money to, you know, secure the southern border. And they were mandated with whatever the congressional mandates were to hire as many, whatever the agent numbers that they. 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. 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 nother organization, Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional, Professional Responsibility, to deal with the. The issues that were now plaguing the Border Patrol and the CBP inspectors that you see, like at airports and land borders.
- [27:43]
Interviewer
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 Graff, who's been. Who's 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 his. 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.
- [28:43]
Eric Ballier
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, Just read. Because I wrapped up my career with the internal affairs apparatus of ice, and I couldn't imagine that pace of criminal. Criminal misconduct by personnel.
- [29:08]
Interviewer
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, and we'll talk about this, but with what we're seeing and how they're responding to these protesters, and, and it's. It doesn't seem like these are well trained people who should be doing this kind of job. Right.
- [29:45]
Eric Ballier
There's a lot of work to do.
- [29:47]
Interviewer
Yeah. So. Okay, we'll get there. But tell me these numbers are freaking crazy. And you actually, you worked. When you, you at one point, you were actually involved in the internal investigations. Right? Internal investigation. So you would be looking at some.
- [30:01]
Eric Ballier
Of these crime for, for the ICE side of the house. Yes, I was internal at ice.
- [30:06]
Interviewer
At ice, not at cbp.
- [30:07]
Eric Ballier
Correct.
- [30:08]
Interviewer
Okay, so that's great for our conversation, but tell me a little bit how that. So you. Homeland Security was created. You're. You're sort of moved and became more of a special agent. What was your career path?
- [30:21]
Eric Ballier
So when ICE was created, really the focus in. In Southern Arizona, kind of between 2002, in 2006, ish. Was. Was really twofold. It was drug. International drug smuggling and international human smuggling. And kind of the, the mantra was humans and, And Dope comes north, money and guns go south. So there was also a focus on bulk cash smuggling and weapons smuggling leaving the US into in New Mexico. So I spent the first three years of my career assigned a 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 5, 10 kilos of cocaine and you would arrest the, the trafficker that, that supplied the, the coke. And then, then I started getting in. I really wanted to get into more like complex criminal investigations, so we did. I was actually introduced to the, to a human source through an ausa, an assistant US Attorney out there who was working with atf. And this particular individual was intertwined with the Sinaloa cartel that was controlling the, like the Caborca Sonora Plaza.
- [31:43]
Interviewer
I've been there.
- [31:44]
Eric Ballier
Okay.
- [31:44]
Interviewer
All right.
- [31:45]
Eric Ballier
So yeah, and there's a long standing history with Caborca going back to like Rafael Carl Quintero and stuff. He's kind of really the one that, that founded that, that group.
- [31:57]
Interviewer
Rafael, Rafael Caro Contera, by the way, is, was a huge drug lord. He was extradited to the U.S. he's now like 80 years he's up there.
- [32:05]
Eric Ballier
He was extradited like two years ago.
- [32:07]
Interviewer
He was part of the Sinaloa cartel, but he was, he's one of sort of the OGs of drug trafficking in Mexico.
- [32:13]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. And. And instrumental in the death of DE agent Kiki Camarena back in 85. And know he was in Mexican prison for a long time and then, and then was let out and then anyways.
- [32:25]
Interviewer
Did you consult for, for narcos, by the way?
- [32:28]
Eric Ballier
I did not.
- [32:29]
Interviewer
Did you watch it?
- [32:29]
Eric Ballier
I did. I love it. I've watched it multiple times and it's a great.
- [32:32]
Interviewer
So real. Right. Yeah, it's really true to what happened. Very similar to what happened. Yeah, go ahead.
- [32:37]
Eric Ballier
Very, very solid storyline. So there was a, a family, the, the Pisoto family. Ignacio, Octavio and Trinidad were three brothers that kind of came up through Raphael and his brother Miguel. Rafael gets arrested. Miguel gets arrested and extradited and they turn over the Caborca cartel to these three brothers. Brothers. And they controlled a lot of the. 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. Guy's name's Geo Sergio Valenzuela. So anyways, that's. Now I forget who it was back then, but the Paisoto family controls Caborca 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. That's. That's. And. And we get. We get. We got along for. For years, and we got to do some. Some.
- [33:58]
Interviewer
So wait, so he was a confidential informant for you?
- [34:01]
Eric Ballier
He was.
- [34:02]
Interviewer
And he was a Mexican guy.
- [34:03]
Eric Ballier
He was.
- [34:03]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [34:03]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. He would. 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.
- [34:14]
Interviewer
No way.
- [34:14]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, he would. He'd casually come over and, like, bump. Bump me a little bit or something like that, just to kind of, like, say hello. Just a really unique individual.
- [34:25]
Interviewer
But did you meet him? Did you arrest him first and then he became a confidential.
- [34:29]
Eric Ballier
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 Caborca corridor and stuff like that. And the ausa, who I was working with at the time, a guy named Dave, basically said, hey, this. This dovetails into everything that you're doing in this little town called Arivaca, which is kind of southwest of. Of Tucson. So it was through that introduction that I. That I got introduced to him.
- [35:04]
Interviewer
And so the idea was that he was going to give you information on the three brothers and the Quora.
- [35:09]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. And he did for. For years. So we actually built. Kate. So Octavio, or Octavio was killed in 2004.
- [35:17]
Interviewer
One of the brothers.
- [35:17]
Eric Ballier
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. By the Mexicans. And we were planning on submitting, like, the extradition package and all that sort of stuff. And then he gets released again, similar to, like, an RC or Rafael Carl.
- [35:49]
Interviewer
Quintero, because he was also arrested and then released before you could get the extra.
- [35:53]
Eric Ballier
So he was.
- [35:54]
Interviewer
A lot of cases. It's because of corruption, by the way.
- [35:56]
Eric Ballier
Right. And Nacho was sentenced to 20 years. 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 in December 26th of 2020. He takes 50 rounds while he's sitting in his.
- [36:12]
Interviewer
Of 2020 or 2010?
- [36:14]
Eric Ballier
2020, he gets killed.
- [36:15]
Interviewer
Oh now, yeah, just on, just recently.
- [36:18]
Eric Ballier
Like six years ago. So day after Christmas, 2020 in Caborca, which is a town he controlled like ran the Plaza for, I think he gets hit 52 times. His wife and 8 month old daughter are in the car. His, his daughter takes around in the arm, survives, his wife survives. He's.
- [36:40]
Interviewer
He's dead and somebody else took over the cartel.
- [36:42]
Eric Ballier
So then there's this infighting and this, this is kind of when like a lot of the, like Chapo's been exp. You know, extradited at this point. There's a lot of infighting between different factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, like between the, the Salazars and the, the Paisoto family for control of. Of this pretty lucrative court corridor.
- [37:04]
Interviewer
So they built the Paisoto family, the three brothers that controlled the Caborca. But they were working with the Sinalo cartel.
- [37:11]
Eric Ballier
Correct.
- [37:11]
Interviewer
Were they part of the Sino.
- [37:13]
Eric Ballier
They were. So they were, they were very much aligned with. They were Miles guys.
- [37:17]
Interviewer
So they were on my.
- [37:18]
Eric Ballier
They were Miles guys. Obviously, you know, Chapo had a big play in that. So yes, they, they were aligned with both of them. And actually like Mayo and Chapo would, when the Beltran label 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, bloed and come in and take over.
- [37:45]
Interviewer
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 face justice as well, which we can get a little bit into that later. So you were working on this case in, in what did you. Were you ever able to make any arrests of any of the top guys here or did this help you get to.
- [38:19]
Eric Ballier
So this was like a leg in to. What we really did was focus on the, the plot what they call like the Plaza bosses. So the, the representatives of like. And they were. It was all factions of the Sinaloa cartel. So essentially like Miles and Chapa Guzman along that stretch of border in Arizona. So you had like the Sonoita 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.
- [38:47]
Interviewer
Right.
- [38:47]
Eric Ballier
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's 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 and him indicted. The Mexicans were able to arrest him, and he was sitting in a. Not altiplano, but another prison outside of Kulia Khan. And in 2014, escaped through a tunnel.
- [39:27]
Interviewer
Also.
- [39:28]
Eric Ballier
Also through a tunnel.
- [39:29]
Interviewer
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 2005. 4, 14, 15.
- [39:40]
Eric Ballier
He escaped in 15, right? Yeah.
- [39:45]
Interviewer
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 in Sinaloa myself.
- [39:58]
Eric Ballier
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. 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, you know, a lot of those places, some of those places have been burnt. The tra, 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 your. To the BlackBerry device. So we were all familiar with it. We started legally intercepting wires, like the communications sometime early 2013. As we're going through, you're seeing all the. All the communications about drug trafficking, and.
- [41:01]
Interviewer
You were listening to the conversation, but you were also seeing the texts back and forth.
- [41:05]
Eric Ballier
So this was only text. So there was no. There was no. So, like, you have to explain to a judge, like, exactly what you want to intercept and the reasons for it. It's a. Understandably, a very. Well, there's a lot of oversight and checks and balances.
- [41:19]
Interviewer
And I'm assuming also they're not saying cocaine and kill people. They're using code words for all of this.
- [41:25]
Eric Ballier
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's got to go like kill. Yeah, kill.
- [41:42]
Interviewer
Oh my God, that's crazy. And in those situations, you would actually contact those people or figure out.
- [41:46]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [41:56]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [41:56]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [42:07]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [42:07]
Eric Ballier
And he didn't believe us.
- [42:09]
Interviewer
No way.
- [42:10]
Eric Ballier
He didn't.
- [42:11]
Interviewer
And was he killed?
- [42:12]
Eric Ballier
He, he wasn't killed by. So Chapo had his own problems immediately after that. So he's not killed by El Chapo. He's at a Christmas party in Mexico, gets piss drunk and gets into a fight with another relative who ends up shooting him, Shooting and killing him. So he ended up getting killed, just not the way we warned him he was going to be.
- [42:37]
Interviewer
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 and I'm glad it's the obligation.
- [42:52]
Eric Ballier
I mean it really, that's, that's the obligation of US law enforcement. That's every wire I've ever done. There's 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. So they're, I mean, it's, that's good.
- [43:14]
Interviewer
To know that that's still the goal that you guys have advice. Okay, so then, and then, and then what? And then how did that get you to. And that is that what eventually got you to El Chapo? Him, himself, partly so at this point, I mean, just to remind our listeners and viewers, but El Chapo was the most wanted man, wasn't he?
- [43:34]
Eric Ballier
I believe he was like the second most wanted man behind at the time, Zawahiri, who was the leader of Al Qaeda.
- [43:42]
Interviewer
That is crazy. What was. So you were, were you so excited? Were you jumping up and down?
- [43:47]
Eric Ballier
We were, yes. So there's, there's obviously that sense of like were on, like this is, this is potentially monumental.
- [43:57]
Interviewer
Just again, this has been sort of. He, he had escaped from prison initial. So this was what year this would.
- [44:04]
Eric Ballier
Have been the end of 2013, fall of 2013.
- [44:06]
Interviewer
Right. And he had escaped from prison. I think the first time was like in 2006 or something. It was.
- [44:14]
Eric Ballier
So he had, it was 11 years prior. I think he was on the, on the run. 2014. 11 years. So it would have been. Yeah, 2003. Ish.
- [44:22]
Interviewer
So the first time he escaped from prison was in 2001. Okay, 2001. So at this point it was 12. 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 a. You're a step closer than anyone else out there in finding out exactly where he is and in catching him.
- [44:43]
Eric Ballier
Right, Absolutely. And so the crazy, the other crazy thing is like you look at like DEA and FBI and these like, in New York, in la, Chicago, like the agents that were putting this together were like a year out of the academy, from HSI and based in Nogales.
- [45:02]
Interviewer
Oh, wow.
- [45:02]
Eric Ballier
So everybody, when we. And I got along great with the bureau guys and, and dea, and they were like, dude, how the, how the hell did you guys get that end up in this? Yeah, 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 counter intelligence and counter surveillance apparatuses that tell him movements of Mexican military units and police and, 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, how do you actually get to him?
- [45:45]
Interviewer
Right, we know what he's saying or what he's writing, but how do we.
- [45:48]
Eric Ballier
Actually know how to get two completely different things? So it's like.
- [45:52]
Interviewer
And how did you.
- [45:53]
Eric Ballier
So we actually teamed. So DEA was inter, like involved in all this from the beginning. And DEA was basically like, hey, we need to bring Seymour 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, the capable capable organization. So I remember being at the embassy in Mexico City and doing all these, all these briefings and plans and stuff like that. And it was still a little bit of like an unsure thing. If we had, if we told, what if we said anything, would we get compromised?
- [46:30]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [46:31]
Eric Ballier
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 off. Who are you? 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, on my country. The last time we went after him, I lost 12 Marines, like, got emotional.
- [46:59]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [47:00]
Eric Ballier
And he was like, I'll commit to, to doing this. And at that point you're, you gotta just. Yeah. Take a leap. And to his credit, he did. He, he would, he would put out kind of almost like misinformation, like, hey, we're gonna go to La Paz or we're going to be in Topolo Bumpo, which are, you know, La Paz is Baja California. The Polo Bumpos in Sinaloa. And just see like what we would intercept about those movements to try to isolate any sort of leaks he had in the organization.
- [47:30]
Interviewer
He was committed. I mean, and he wasn't compromised. Like, unfortunately, a lot of people in Mexico. Yeah. Government are El Lobo. So this was the Wolf.
- [47:39]
Eric Ballier
And I think he recently retired. Yeah.
- [47:42]
Interviewer
And then how did you guys get to a chapel that first time?
- [47:44]
Eric Ballier
So the first time we knew.
- [47:48]
Interviewer
So you kept giving information.
- [47:49]
Eric Ballier
We did, yeah. And so I was in Arizona. We put A team with DEA and some U.S. marshals with Seymour 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 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 and there was some communication where he made a comment, the courier made a comment like, hey, I'm gonna drop off breakfast early and I'm gonna, then I'm gonna go someplace else. So the, the assessment was that he was going to deliver Chapo food. So we're like, all right, now we gotta find. Now we gotta find them in the middle of Khan, in the middle of the night.
- [48:52]
Interviewer
Find the courier. So you figure out where Chapel was.
- [48:55]
Eric Ballier
And they did. They did, they did. So they, they, 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. And he showed him Showed him the house.
- [49:11]
Interviewer
Where he was. Yeah.
- [49:12]
Eric Ballier
Where he was going, where.
- [49:13]
Interviewer
Where El Chapo was.
- [49:14]
Eric Ballier
Chapo was.
- [49:14]
Interviewer
And then what happened?
- [49:15]
Eric Ballier
Then they couldn't. They couldn't get through the front door because he had reinforced. So identify the house. Same r 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. 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.
- [49:58]
Interviewer
And he escaped, right? He escaped through the bathtub.
- [50:00]
Eric Ballier
Through the bathtub, which we knew about.
- [50:02]
Interviewer
Yeah, we filmed.
- [50:02]
Eric Ballier
We've.
- [50:03]
Interviewer
I filmed outside this house. We. I remember that we knew they had.
- [50:06]
Eric Ballier
A bathtub because they got scared a day or two prior and said, flatten the bathtub and leave in the Jetta.
- [50:13]
Interviewer
Right, right.
- [50:14]
Eric Ballier
So.
- [50:14]
Interviewer
So it was. It was an amazing contraption where the bathtub would go up. Right. And he had access to a tunnel and then he went through the sort of sewage tunnels.
- [50:24]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, the sewer. The sewer system.
- [50:26]
Interviewer
Yeah. Of Kulia Khan and went into a car and fled. And.
- [50:29]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. And so he gets picked up, he hits. Taken down a 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 gonna do? Like, I figured, like, hey, we got to. 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.
- [50:54]
Interviewer
How were you so frustrated, though?
- [50:56]
Eric Ballier
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 like, listen, I. 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.
- [51:22]
Interviewer
That's very sweet. Yeah, it's like a coach's talk with the team after they lost, but they tried their everything.
- [51:28]
Eric Ballier
And then that same guy, Jack, who I actually intervened in a rocking situation from the border patrol like 14 years prior that's how I first met him.
- [51:37]
Interviewer
Wait, who's Jackie?
- [51:37]
Eric Ballier
So sorry, I didn't mean to jump around. So Jack was the one that put the pieces together that Chapo was on the other.
- [51:43]
Interviewer
Okay, yeah.
- [51:44]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [51:51]
Interviewer
Oh, that's. Oh, that's how you met? Yeah, the rock. Rock situation. Yeah, rock. I thought you were saying no rock.
- [51:56]
Eric Ballier
Like. Yeah, like rocks coming over the border.
- [51:59]
Interviewer
Wow. So he was younger than you?
- [52:00]
Eric Ballier
He was a little younger, yeah.
- [52:02]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [52:03]
Eric Ballier
And then so he comes to me and says, hey, he's in Mazatlan. Chapo's in Mazatlan.
- [52:09]
Interviewer
He figured out also through the communication.
- [52:11]
Eric Ballier
And I'm like, how do you know that? And then he. He kind of laid it out for me. So he's like, he's in Mazatlan and his bodyguard took him there. I'm like, how do you. 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 we need that needs to be convinced. We still need to convince Seymour to move out of Kuliakan, go down to Mazatlan, and essentially this is like February. And, you know, Mazatlan's a pretty big tourist destination. And we knew, we suspected Chapo was in a high rise near the beach. And Seymour was like, we can handle Cooliacon. Like, but like, if there's a full blown gun battle, yeah, yeah, that's a bad day. But they, to their credit, like, 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 1011 story high rise.
- [53:08]
Interviewer
Filmed outside of that too.
- [53:09]
Eric Ballier
Oh, did you. Yeah, exactly.
- [53:11]
Interviewer
That's all it is.
- [53:12]
Eric Ballier
So. But they didn't know what roomy. They knew he was there, but they didn't know what room he was in. 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, like, where is he? And the guy was like, I don't know what you're talking about. 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 440-402- so they went up. Seymour breached the door. Chapo and Emma, his wife, are in bed. Chapo jumps out. He grabs, like, a rusty or some sort of AR15 rifle, goes into the bathroom. One of the same. Our 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, Chapo 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.
- [54:29]
Interviewer
Okay. And then they told you it was your reaction.
- [54:32]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [54:44]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [54:45]
Eric Ballier
With the.
- [54:45]
Interviewer
With the picture, were you so happy?
- [54:48]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, I was like, holy at the time. I'm like, holy. But then at the same. The same time, I'm like, I've got a. Like, Like, I know Jake. I know his family. Like, all this sort of like, he's in. He's kind of in the lion's den here. Like, great that they got him, but we still got to get them home. And so they. They loaded Chapo into a couple Blackhawks. They flew to a military base. Then from there, they took Chapo to Mexico City. And then dea. I booked. I booked Jake a flight from Mazatlan direct to Phoenix. And DEA made sure, like, basically walked them. Walked them on the plane to come.
- [55:27]
Interviewer
Back here, to come back home.
- [55:28]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [55:29]
Interviewer
And then he went. El Chapo went to Altiplano Prison outside of Mexico City. High security prison. And what it was like a couple years later that he managed to escape that as well.
- [55:39]
Eric Ballier
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 kind of moved around a little bit because it's the federal government, and that's kind of how. How it progresses. And then one Saturday morning in 2015, 16, I get it.
- [56:11]
Interviewer
My.
- [56:11]
Eric Ballier
I wake up and my phone is just blowing up. And one of the guys, Gabe, is like, he's gone. I was like, who's gone? Like, I thought like. Like somebody died, like, from our group or something. I'm like, who's gone? And he's just like, jgl, Joaquin Guzman, Loetta. 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 maximum security prison.
- [56:38]
Interviewer
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.
- [57:01]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [57:01]
Interviewer
Go in. And he's not there. Go ahead.
- [57:03]
Eric Ballier
And there's that video. There's that video where he, like, he kind of walks around. It's from the. 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 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.
- [57:25]
Interviewer
Were you so mad?
- [57:26]
Eric Ballier
I was just.
- [57:27]
Interviewer
All the work you put into part.
- [57:28]
Eric Ballier
Of it, you're just kind of like, you got to be kidding me. And. And then part of it's like, pissed off. You're like. Like, this is. This is a slap in the face to not just US 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 gotta. You gotta get the band back together. Like, the. Only. There's only, you know, a handful of people in federal law enforcement that have the. The corporate knowledge of. Of. Of this guy. And they're. They all good. Chunk of them happen to be in D.C. and. And Ray, who was the initial point of contact I had with dea, was Also in. He was with DEA in, in Virginia too. So yeah, they put the, they got the band back together. We're like, let's do it again.
- [58:30]
Interviewer
These are the only people that can actually catch this guy again. And so that started your investigation is 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.
- [58:43]
Eric Ballier
Maybe we crossed paths.
- [58:45]
Interviewer
So I found out I'd been to Sinaloa a few times before, had reported on drug trafficking there, obviously was very aware of who El Chapo was. And, and I. And then I found out that he had fled Altiplano. 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. He contact this guy, amazing guy, Miguel Angel 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, and I think is there. 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 Culiacan and we started the journey, me, Miguel, Alex and Pete, part of our team. All the way to where his mom lives 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 middle of the car. We had to stay overnight in one of the towns. When people would ask us what we were doing, we would say that we're going up to. To visit El Chapo's mother. And we get warnings. But most of all it was interesting because everybody there was. 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. 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 these. These. The mountains, the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. There's a lot of poverty. And here's a. The drug lord and an organization that's in a low 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 and it was crazy. The mother's house is. You could see. It's one of the first things you see when I 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. And. 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 are 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 go ahead salute, saluted us and said, oh yeah. Called them el senor. Oh, yes, please go ahead if you want to go el Senor, 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 nice looking guys, showed up with armed, obviously, lots of 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 El Chapo and see how she's doing. And they said, 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 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. 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? You go, what shall 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. He 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 4x4 because we wanted to see. I knew they weren't going to kill us or. I didn't think so. 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. 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, Pete, 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 4x4, starts going. This is like one of those quad bikes.
- [64:09]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [64:10]
Interviewer
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, where you never separate things. Team, right? And who knows we. That now he's not. We have no control over what happens with him. So we're. We've turned to the lady, the wife of the pastor. We asked her, what. What do you. Do you think they're going to kill him? What's happening? He says, oh, no, 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're so happy. And he says, essentially they want to. They. They want money. They said they'll let you interview the mother if you pay. And I said, okay, I can negotiate the pay, so please take me this time. So they take 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 till 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, mija called me, I if you want to interview, you have to pay. And I explained, look, as a journalist, we don't pay for interviews. And. And then he got. Initially 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 my. I'm going to send my men after you. And that was it. That was it. We left as fast as possible.
- [65:42]
Eric Ballier
I don't blame you on that one.
- [65:43]
Interviewer
But we did a story about this for. 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 an existent in the place where everybody thought El Chapo was hiding, which turned out to be the case. He was hiding right there. Yes, it's just outside. Just outside. We went to Latuna, but he was hiding outside Latuna. 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 he. 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.
- [66:39]
Eric Ballier
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 them. They're going to meet him. And I was annoyed. I'm like, what do you. Who. Who's going to meet what? Like, what are you talking about? He's like, bro, Kate Del Castillo and Sean Penn. I'm like. And hey, like, 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, in Los Angeles and some fairly well known names and they all, they all passed.
- [67:24]
Interviewer
I would have said yes in a second.
- [67:26]
Eric Ballier
So I should, we should have told them. I'm like, hey, go see Marry up. And so he's like, yes. Sean Penn, Quito Castillo. They're on a chartered flight 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 in Guadalajara and then, and then they lost them.
- [68:10]
Interviewer
Can you backtrack a little bit for me? How did Jake even find out that they were going to visit him? How did that.
- [68:15]
Eric Ballier
So Chapo had a fixation with Kate Del Castillo.
- [68:19]
Interviewer
Yeah. So who is by the way a Mexican Correct. Actress who was in a bunch of, of very well known soap operas. And he was very beautiful.
- [68:27]
Eric Ballier
Yes.
- [68:27]
Interviewer
So he loves beautiful women.
- [68:29]
Eric Ballier
Fixated. And I think she had made some positive like social media posts about him or something. And 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, to Guadalajara and there's really. It only made sense. And this is post after he escaped Altiplano know and it's like, look, he knows that the clock is ticking and he wants this pitch, 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.
- [69:07]
Interviewer
How did you know how the pilot was?
- [69:08]
Eric Ballier
Because he had. Chapo only had a few trusted pilots. One was in custody that 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, 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.
- [69:43]
Interviewer
So at this point, sorry, you were Talking about how you figured out which pilot.
- [69:46]
Eric Ballier
Which pilot? Yeah. And he. I'm pretty sure the guy went by LDS17 and he was going to fly him out to meet the man Chapo. So we identified this property in the mountains and we, 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.
- [70:18]
Interviewer
So what I gig. Tell me if I'm wrong, but what I had heard was that it was no finding out that. That Sean Penn first was flown. When he was flown to Mexico. He's flown to where? To Guadalajara.
- [70:33]
Eric Ballier
Guadalajara.
- [70:34]
Interviewer
So the fact that Sean Penn was flying to Guadalajara and an undisclosed or like sort of a secretive. Looked like a secretive mission, and that Cato del Cassi was there as well, these two big VIPs was what first raised the red flag, right?
- [70:47]
Eric Ballier
Correct. 100%.
- [70:48]
Interviewer
So that is true.
- [70:49]
Eric Ballier
That is true.
- [70:50]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [70:50]
Eric Ballier
Yes.
- [70:51]
Interviewer
So, so this, when they, when you, when you guys saw, Wait, what is Sean Penn doing in Guadalajara with this very famous Mexican actress? And. No, and. And was. And knowing that Kate Del Castillo had recently tweeted about El Chapo or what was like, could it be the. Just. Couldn't it have been just been because they maybe were having an affair?
- [71:14]
Eric Ballier
It could have been. Which probably I don't think would have changed the calculus much, but it was also that that Chapo had a fixation with Kate Del Castillo that. And he was a fan of her work in the, like, telenovelas and stuff like that that she did. So when we saw Kate Del 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.
- [72:14]
Interviewer
So you were tracking the plane all the way as it was making its way to. From taking Que del Casillo and Sean Penn to the mountains. You were tracking it all the way.
- [72:23]
Eric Ballier
We knew where the. We knew where the. We knew where that. Where they ended up.
- [72:27]
Interviewer
Yeah, because you were tracking the plane.
- [72:30]
Eric Ballier
It wasn't Necessarily the plane, per se. Plane was part of it. Some others. There was some other. Yeah. Okay.
- [72:36]
Interviewer
Has this not been published?
- [72:38]
Eric Ballier
I don't know what, like, I don't know what's out there from the trial and the. That whole Kate Del Castillo, Sean Penn saga.
- [72:44]
Interviewer
But one of their phones was being tapped some other way.
- [72:48]
Eric Ballier
There was an electronic footprint that allowed us to identify this ranch.
- [72:54]
Interviewer
Huh.
- [72:55]
Eric Ballier
And we knew that all three of them were there. And we had Samer ready to assault the ranch.
- [73:05]
Interviewer
So they were Mexico Marines.
- [73:07]
Eric Ballier
Mexico Marines. And you gotta remember, like, Mexico was embarrassed. Like, Chapo escaped this. 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 gonna blow up. We're going to hit this ranch. And then as it, as that plan makes its way through the approval chain through the Department of State, it's like, wait a second. Kate Del Castillo has dual citizenships. Sean Penn is a US Citizen. Like, there's a high probability that this is going to be a violent encounter. And, you know, we don't want two US Citizens caught in a high drug traffic, high profile drug traffic shootout.
- [73:48]
Interviewer
Right.
- [73:49]
Eric Ballier
So we were told, can't hit it until they're. Until we're confident that they're gone. So they left and Seymour hit it. There was a big firefight. The reports are kind of sketchy. There's some reporting that Chapo was still there, some reporting that he wasn't. We're getting reports that he had been injured or like, went down a ravine on an ATV or. There was all these, all this different reporting was coming in. We didn't. 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. Like, they came up empty. I think a couple cicados were killed, but he wasn't there. And we were kind of like, we.
- [74:29]
Interviewer
Just missed him again.
- [74:31]
Eric Ballier
We just shot our shot. And now he knows without question that the Mexican government and the US 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 of them.
- [75:10]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [75:11]
Eric Ballier
And in that world, like, he scared the out of people. And that's not something that's Done, you know, easy. So we started focus on focusing on 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.
- [75:38]
Interviewer
North of Kuliakan, the capital.
- [75:39]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, yes, north, yes, sorry.
- [75:42]
Interviewer
Just outside of the coast, right, right, yeah, a little bit inside.
- [75:46]
Eric Ballier
Yes.
- [75:46]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [75:47]
Eric Ballier
So a little ways outside of Kulikan. And this time they want to get eyes on the house and they, they want to see either Cholo Ivan or, 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, 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 like a balcony. I've got a picture of like a dead sicario with like a handgun on like a balcony of some sorts. Chapo's not there, but they, they've been, you know, they've kind of seen this movie before. So they're like, all right, we're going to tear the house apart, 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, in a bedroom closet. And then they're like, okay, he escaped through the tunnel again. He's probably in the sewers. But 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, 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, Seymar 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, like in this CD hotel parking lot. So they roll up and this is where the version is. Like, whichever one you're gonna believe. Like, the local police are like, oh, thank God you're here. You know, we've, we caught him. We wanted to get out of the, out of the main thoroughfare, but here he is. The, the other version is they interrupted the, the negotiation to set him free. Yeah. At any rate, they got him. They got him. Yeah.
- [78:24]
Interviewer
Finally.
- [78:25]
Eric Ballier
Finally.
- [78:25]
Interviewer
I guess you were very happy.
- [78:28]
Eric Ballier
But also it was wanting to make.
- [78:30]
Interviewer
Sure he makes his way to the United States as fast as possible so he doesn't escape again. Right.
- [78:34]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. And that was.
- [78:40]
Interviewer
1-19-20.
- [78:41]
Eric Ballier
January 19th of 2017 was when he was extra 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.
- [78:53]
Interviewer
How did that feel to know that you had a part in all of that?
- [78:56]
Eric Ballier
It was, I, 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, when you talk about, like when they first started getting indications that they were intercepting Chapo, to the day he makes his appearance in a Brooklyn courthouse, like, there were a lot of ups and downs along the way and they just, they just stuck with it. They, they ignored the naysayers. They believed in, in their work product. Tremendously proud, like, 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, in the western hemisphere.
- [79:51]
Interviewer
Were you part of the trial?
- [79:53]
Eric Ballier
I was not part of the trial. We were, we were, we went to the trial you did for. We spent a week up in Brooklyn. I remember seeing when, when they, when the marshals ushered Chapo in, being. It was anti climatic even in my head for, you know, all these drug traffickers and stuff they had investigated over the years and stuff like that. You, 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, you know, he was clean shaven, he didn't have his, you know, standard mustache. He was in a dark blue suit. He looked, 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'm just remember thinking, I'm like, that's the dude. That's the guy. It was very like, yeah, just anti climatic. But Jack, the same guy from the board 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 seen Chapo, who obviously knows his name, he's seeing Emma, who knows his name, the defense attorneys. Like, 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, like. And he, he, he testified probably two days on the stand. Super proud of the guy, man. Like, I'm like, man, you came a long way from getting rocks thrown at you in Nogales in 2000.
- [81:38]
Interviewer
Wow. And now Chap was doing life in prison in a prison in Colorado about.
- [81:44]
Eric Ballier
An hour and a half from where I live.
- [81:45]
Interviewer
Is it really an hour and a half, neighbor?
- [81:49]
Eric Ballier
Somewhat. Somewhat.
- [81:51]
Interviewer
Did you ever. Did anyone ever talk to Sean Penn after that? I mean, I'm sure law enforcement talked to him, right?
- [81:56]
Eric Ballier
Nobody from our team did, no. No.
- [81:58]
Interviewer
So when do you think he knows that? I'm. Now, I'm sure it's been reported and he knows, but I wonder what, like he, how, how much he, or even what he feels about that. The fact that his meeting with el Chapo ultimately led to Chapo's recapture.
- [82:14]
Eric Ballier
I don't know. Yeah, Like, I was not happy because, like, we had the opportunity and, you know, there was no mistaking who they were meeting with. Right. Like, he is, he is a wanted criminal over and over again. And, you know, I understand the state department's position. Like, hey, we don't want to get u. S. Citizens killed if we don't, 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. Right, 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.
- [82:55]
Interviewer
Yeah, that's right. For rolling stone, he wrote an article about his meeting with el Chapo. Yeah. Right.
- [83:00]
Eric Ballier
So I wonder if that article, if Chapo was captured, if he wasn't captured, when that article would have dropped. I don't I don't know.
- [83:09]
Interviewer
You don't think it would have dropped or would.
- [83:10]
Eric Ballier
I mean, I. I think would have put a big bullseye on Mr. Pen.
- [83:15]
Interviewer
Because.
- [83:16]
Eric Ballier
Oh. Because he. He put a lot out there. I. I don't remember. I read the.
- [83:20]
Interviewer
In terms of the details.
- [83:21]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [83:22]
Interviewer
Oh, yeah, yeah. He wasn't.
- [83:23]
Eric Ballier
And I think Chapo being a free man, there's a. The. The calculation switches.
- [83:29]
Interviewer
Oh, yeah, yeah. You're. Yeah. You're.
- [83:31]
Eric Ballier
You know, like.
- [83:32]
Interviewer
Right.
- [83:32]
Eric Ballier
I. I don't know. I don't. 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.
- [83:39]
Interviewer
So you think that he felt safe enough now that he's captured to put the article out? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It was interesting. It was. You. You're annoyed at El Chapo, at Sean Penn for not being able to catch El Chapo when you wanted, and I'm annoyed at him for scooping me.
- [83:55]
Eric Ballier
Fair enough.
- [83:56]
Interviewer
All right. We both have our grievances with Sean. Penny, let's go to. So then. Okay, so then you were there. You stayed with hsi, Right. For how much?
- [84:09]
Eric Ballier
I did longer. So Chapel's trial wraps. I'm in D.C. all this is going on, like, to be said, like, I. 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 a. 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 D.C. i didn't want to go back to D.C. 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.
- [85:07]
Interviewer
Was the Shawna Ford case? Was that. That was before.
- [85:10]
Eric Ballier
That was before. That was in. That's.
- [85:12]
Interviewer
Can you tell me a little bit about that case? And then I want to go back.
- [85:14]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, absolutely.
- [85:16]
Interviewer
Affairs.
- [85:17]
Eric Ballier
So, going back to when. When I was working on the case against nacho pies.
- [85:23]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [85:23]
Eric Ballier
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, just tons of marijuana. There was a guy out there named Raul Junior Flores who was a, was a smuggler. He was no angel. And in 2009, in that 2009 era, there was, there was a move, militia movements along the border where they were, you know, doing their patriotic duty to patrol the border and all this augment border patrol. And it was a, it was a, it was a mess. You didn't. They dressed like law enforcement, but they had no law enforcement authority. They were, you know, robbing aliens and stealing drug loads. There's all this like undercurrent of criminal activity associated with them. Well, in 2009, there's Sha Ford, a guy named Giola and a guy with the last name Bush. They do a home invasion on Raul Jr. Flores's home because they know, 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.
- [86:53]
Interviewer
So wait, so they have a, 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 like the proceeds from drug trafficking?
- [87:16]
Eric Ballier
Yes, that's. That was, that was what their wow plan was. So they do a home invasion at Junior's house. He lives with his, his wife and at the time I think his daughter Bricenia might have been nine or 12. Shauna Ford and her gang shoot Junior, his wife calls 91 1. I've listened to those 911 calls. You can actually hear the screaming in the shots in the background. They kill Brasenia, the daughter, and they.
- [87:50]
Interviewer
Kill 12 year old daughter.
- [87:51]
Eric Ballier
12 year old daughter. She was either 9 or 12 at the time, I forget which one. And they kill Junior somehow she I think got a gun and basically like fired back and they fled. Junior's dead, her daughter's dead. They ended up catching, catching up with Shauna Ford and the other two. Shauna Ford get two of them. Got Shauna 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 you know, that really thrust the whole kind of militia border movement and that little town of Arivaka into the national spotlight just because of the. The brutality of it and the fact that it was a.
- [88:37]
Interviewer
You know, it's a crazy story. Shawna Ford was sort of the leader of the group.
- [88:40]
Eric Ballier
She was, yes.
- [88:41]
Interviewer
Yeah. I remember seeing photos of her. It's such a crazy story.
- [88:45]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [88:45]
Interviewer
And. And. And you were investigating it, so I.
- [88:48]
Eric Ballier
Had a case on Junior. The other. The other interesting fact is that there was a defendant that I. 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 Shauna Ford, Gaxiola and Bush. He testified against them and the fact that they were there for no other reason than to. To run the home invasion. So he kind of. My book redeemed himself a little bit from his.
- [89:22]
Interviewer
Right.
- [89:22]
Eric Ballier
Drug trafficking.
- [89:23]
Interviewer
Yeah. When you were in 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 that were coming through your hands, if you don't mind talking about it?
- [89:36]
Eric Ballier
I can talk. I. I am non disclosed in. 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, you know, the courts would deal with it, and then, you know, 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, you know, they. They can be disturbing. There were, you know, some. Some rape cases involving, you know, color of law, and usually in detention settings, immigration detention settings, there were corruption issues involving like visa fraud type stuff where they would. Would sell information for money in order to. And then the 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.
- [91:00]
Interviewer
Yeah. So corruption wasn't widespread, but it was.
- [91:03]
Eric Ballier
Correct.
- [91:03]
Interviewer
Just like it exists in the cpp.
- [91:05]
Eric Ballier
Correct.
- [91:07]
Interviewer
Reported a lot about this. So when. 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 bank doesn't have these, this, this record and also does. Do you think that it sort of is that the numbers are similar when it comes to ice?
- [91:43]
Eric Ballier
I would venture to say that ICE does have those numbers. So like one of the mandatory reporting requirements was an employee arrest for anything, you know, whether it's a dui, a domestic, you know, situation or something felonious. So those that data set exists within the agency, they have it? Yes.
- [92:04]
Interviewer
Do you mind if I do a search real quick?
- [92:05]
Eric Ballier
Sure.
- [92:06]
Interviewer
I just, I'm curious to see if.
- [92:07]
Eric Ballier
Whether or not they.
- [92:08]
Interviewer
Because I tried this morning and that's what it's. My search reveal that there is no actual record. The same way that CBD's record.
- [92:16]
Eric Ballier
That I don't doubt.
- [92:17]
Interviewer
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?
- [92:28]
Eric Ballier
It does, it does.
- [92:30]
Interviewer
It doesn't mean that they don't keep track of them, but that they're not public. I guess. I guess, yeah. Which. Yeah. So, but does it, does it. If you're looking at these CBP numbers, do you think that the ICE numbers are similar?
- [92:43]
Eric Ballier
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.
- [92:55]
Interviewer
Multiple per day and it wasn't one every 24, 36. But you're also not supervising the whole country. Right.
- [93:03]
Eric Ballier
So I, I was like the, the internal affairs apparatus, everything, any employee arrest or allegation funnels into a central repository. Right. So you would see employee arrest, that would be kind of the first upfront, like kind of bottom line, up front stuff. And you might get a couple, a couple a week, not every hour on the hour for years on end.
- [93:30]
Interviewer
So when did the most recent recruitment surge start again?
- [93:37]
Eric Ballier
I 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.
- [94:04]
Interviewer
And so who do you think, how do you think that's going, their recruitment?
- [94:08]
Eric Ballier
It's a disaster. I, 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 J a paper in one pay period in January of this year, 26, they, they onboarded 1246 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, my onboard 400 agents in an entire year.
- [94:38]
Interviewer
Right.
- [94:38]
Eric Ballier
So you're, you're talking over three times that in a snapshot in a two week period in January.
- [94:45]
Interviewer
And what is the, why is that a problem? Explain.
- [94:51]
Eric Ballier
I know, but, so it's a, it's a problem on several fronts. I think the, the biggest one to me is the fact that you cannot adequately assess, vet and make a hiring determination in that short of time. So normally like a background investigation would take months. You know, they would, they would comb through your past, they would talk to your neighbors, they would talk to, you know, former employers. There's you know, polygraphs involved, there's all this other sort of stuff that, 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, there's automatic medical disqualifiers, you know, and I don't have the list in front of me, but if anybody has, you know, 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 the, 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. They, 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, decade investment that you're making. And you're also putting that individual out on the street, armed, armed, ideally, situation, right for, 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.
- [97:03]
Interviewer
Yeah. I mean one of the things that, that I think most people maybe don't know, but it's the first time in modern American history where federal force is being used against the civil rights of Americans. I, you know, the, 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, 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.
- [97:51]
Eric Ballier
I do feel there's a fundamental breakdown in leadership where that you have under trained, 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, the masks. I've been against that from the beginning. I don't, 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, that should be like, should be. We just shouldn't stand for that. Like, and I understand the doctor.
- [98:37]
Interviewer
Yeah, go ahead.
- [98:37]
Eric Ballier
Like, yeah, they'll, 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, and, 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.
- [99:08]
Interviewer
Away, strips away all accountability right. From them. Yeah. Because they can do whatever they want and you know, they're not going to know exactly who did it. And there's, you know, there's a level of protection that shouldn't be there.
- [99:21]
Eric Ballier
I'm absolutely against it.
- [99:25]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [99:25]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. I don't know what to say other.
- [99:27]
Interviewer
Than just, and talk to me also about the use of force because this is something that, yeah. And that's seems very excessive.
- [99:33]
Eric Ballier
That's, it's troubling. It's hard to watch. So 25 years I served in the agency. Your, 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 ability 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. It. Just because you escalate, you don't stay there. You know, maybe the person's like, oh, I'm good. I'm good. You bring it back down. And what I see here is there is no. It's just straight to the top and it's. 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. To like, intentionally burn someone, but at the same time, like, there's right and wrong. And everybody knows in this line of work when someone's out of line and at some, at some point, people have to stand up and be like, that's, that's not okay. And I hope more people do because, like, it just, just. I worry that, like, this just becomes kind of baked into the. Baked into the norm.
- [100:51]
Interviewer
Do you have many of your colleagues that are saying and standing up and saying this? And if so not, why not?
- [100:56]
Eric Ballier
So not.
- [100:57]
Interviewer
Why?
- [100:57]
Eric Ballier
The departments had a Put. 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. Then now you've, now you've taken a. 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, I think, again, to my, 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. To happen. In the past, this would never. This would never stand.
- [101:44]
Interviewer
I know you're retired, but do you fear any consequences for being so outspoken about what do you think, how you think what they're doing?
- [101:53]
Eric Ballier
No, not really. I mean, I haven't changed, you know, from when I started to. To now. Like, I, If I, If I think something, I'm gonna say people may or may not agree with it. I've lost friends.
- [102:07]
Interviewer
Have you?
- [102:08]
Eric Ballier
Over. Over speaking out against what's going on? Yeah.
- [102:10]
Interviewer
So you started speaking out recently, once these raids started. So what. What did they call you or email you and say, hey, I can't believe you're saying this? What do they say?
- [102:18]
Eric Ballier
It was worse than that. One of a Guy who I've known for. What are we in 20, 26? For 24 years.
- [102:24]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [102:25]
Eric Ballier
Was at my wedding, text 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.
- [102:37]
Interviewer
He's threatening you. Wow.
- [102:38]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [102:39]
Interviewer
How did that make you feel?
- [102:40]
Eric Ballier
I told him off and I blocked them.
- [102:44]
Interviewer
Where do you think that's coming from?
- [102:46]
Eric Ballier
I think it's coming from just the. The entrenched tribalism that, like, you're kind of seeing in. In the overall population. And there is this. There is this undercurrent in law enforcement about speaking out against law enforcement. Like, you know, that, like, the thin blue line type thing. I understand it. I've never, Never agreed. 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. To use excessive force or these kind of, like, crazy tactics. And, like, that has coexisted for. 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, 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. And I've asked other people, I'm like, if there was another 9, 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.
- [104:39]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [104:39]
Eric Ballier
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 gonna take years if it especially within DHS if, if that trust of the public can never be replaced.
- [105:09]
Interviewer
That's why so many people are talking about getting rid of the whole department because of it. I think that there's the. It's this reliving 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 team, my tribe. Right?
- [105:33]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [105:34]
Interviewer
And, and there is a zero nuance. And, and, and therefore. Yeah. You know, 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. It's not good for anyone.
- [106:03]
Eric Ballier
100. Right. And I would say that, like I'm. 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, doesn't matter. It. 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 you. You're talking bad about cops. If that's your mentality.
- [106:42]
Interviewer
Right. This is not that.
- [106:43]
Eric Ballier
Then like, there's no net loss to me.
- [106:45]
Interviewer
Right. And I mean, we, 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 her somebody. We see this again and again every day in the news, it seems. Is that. Okay, are you, 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?
- [107:23]
Eric Ballier
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 blanc 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, law enforcement officer, especially in, in dealing with like arrests and stuff like that, needs to be intentional and deliberate and in furtherance of an objective. Like what are you trying to accomplish? If you are, 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, right? 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 snow bank and getting in our trucks and leave, I'm going to put him in handcuffs and arrest them 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 like if you're gonna, if you're trying to spray somebody with pepper spray, you're trying to either disperse a crowd or stop someone who's being non compliant, which would essentially either end up in a, like an unawful assembly and the state locals would come in and just, you know, push people out or the person would, a person would get arrested. But again I, I wrestle with what is the law enforcement objective of continuously spraying people or hitting with the batons or just like these like WWF wrestling moves that I've never seen or ever been trained or taught or anything.
- [109:25]
Interviewer
Trying to tackle people to the ground. Yeah, what is that about?
- [109:28]
Eric Ballier
And for what again to what, what is your objection objective? And I, 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 that I just like where, where is the training? Where's the supervision? Where's the accountability like that.
- [110:04]
Interviewer
Do you think that the Renee Good or the Alex Brady deaths were justified?
- [110:10]
Eric Ballier
It's a tough question. I think they. So having been, having been injured or I was hit in a, in a vehicle, we're rescuing hostages in 2008, I'm very cognizant of where I place my. Myself in front of her 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.
- [110:39]
Interviewer
I think apparently he had also been.
- [110:41]
Eric Ballier
Hurt, which makes it even more questionable in my opinion. 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, as a tactical team as to like, okay, how do we, how do we approach these vehicle scenarios? How do we. How can we better our tactics and train differently and stuff like that. We went to other agencies, ATF and FBI and asked 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.
- [111:19]
Interviewer
Why do you think he shot her?
- [111:23]
Eric Ballier
I think it's policing by ego. Putting it bluntly, I think. 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. For certain. But in just looking at everything, that case included, I think there's a lot of policing by ego and that, that loses every time.
- [111:54]
Interviewer
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 their egos are abused and they need to do something and they need to show how they are in the position of power.
- [112:10]
Eric Ballier
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 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, 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 you got to have tough skin. It's like, I wouldn't want to be called that day in, day out, but at the same time.
- [113:04]
Interviewer
But again, this is why recruitment is so important in making sure that you're training people before putting them out there. Right.
- [113:10]
Eric Ballier
100%. And law enforcement officers, federal, state and local does not matter. You have, you are vested with the authority to take liberty and legally take life. And it took me a couple years to really understand the gravity of that and the amount of, of authority that you're given and that like that is a privilege. And they give that to you because they trust your judgment, they trust your abilities to actually execute your duties in, in the fullness of your capabilities and with empathy and fairness and all those, 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, of how we're doing things or how they're doing things, because this is not, this is not policing and this is not law enforcement as I, as I practiced it.
- [114:17]
Interviewer
And tell me also Eric, how these are people, even the ones that have been in the, in the force or as 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. So can you talk to me a little bit about.
- [114:34]
Eric Ballier
Yeah, 100%. 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 US Border Patrol Academy, which was basically like stand in a line and you know, back then they had those big like, like wooden night sticks. Right. Hold the line. That was it. And then once when I went through 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, there is, there is no training. And, and that's where I've said before, like the agency is, 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, the results that, that come when that, that when that dynamic is prevalent for as long as it has been.
- [115:44]
Interviewer
Yeah. So it's not just putting people, civilians at risk. You're also endangering your lives of the actual agents in this case because they're not trained for this situation. Do you, do you do you think Alex Paretti's killing was justified?
- [115:58]
Eric Ballier
No, I don't.
- [116:01]
Interviewer
Just. You looked at the videos and you don't think there's any way that he should have been shot?
- [116:06]
Eric Ballier
I. I think the video suggests. Speak for itself with regard to the fact that when you look at the facts, he did not have a weapon. He was.
- [116:16]
Interviewer
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?
- [116:24]
Eric Ballier
Some, somewhere.
- [116:27]
Interviewer
Well, how would they justify it?
- [116:29]
Eric Ballier
Like an us versus them mentality that. And I think that's really part of the. The psyche that concerns me is that there is that us versus them mentality, like our. The public is the enemy. I think if anybody looked at that objectively who's been in law enforcement, that there is no justification for the use of deadly force. Nonetheless, 10 or 11 shots. Well, some of them while he was already on the ground incapacitated.
- [117:03]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [117:04]
Eric Ballier
I don't know how you. I don't know how you square that.
- [117:07]
Interviewer
What would you. If you were still working in the internal affairs, what would you do?
- [117:10]
Eric Ballier
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. This is. 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, you know, there's various, like they call it tps, temporary protected Status for different countries or, you know, stuff like that here. It just seems cruel and, you know, the literal. Sure. Did. Did they. If you're here without status or illegally, did you. Did you break a law? Yes. You did? I probably broke four laws this week and it's Monday. That being said, and I say that figuratively, a little bit of. Of tongue in cheek because, you know, the, the level of. Of kind of cruelty and the, the level of force first that's being out. That's out there for civil immigration enforcement. So these aren't. The majority of these cases are. These incidents are not being charged with a, with a criminal offense like that that I.
- [118:35]
Interviewer
No, they're not.
- [118:36]
Eric Ballier
For 25 years.
- [118:37]
Interviewer
Right.
- [118:38]
Eric Ballier
So this is, this is a civil matter.
- [118:40]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [118:41]
Eric Ballier
So they're not, they're not even being charged with like an illegal entry or an entry without inspection. Right. These. 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, you know, the immigration systems, the legal process is in disarray as well. Like, there's far too few immigration judges. I mean, it takes forever to actually.
- [119:07]
Interviewer
Get papers and become documented if you want. Wanted to.
- [119:09]
Eric Ballier
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. Of the modern. The modern era. So you're, you know, it's. But to answer your question, like, the. Like, I would be raising holy hell. I'd be like, how are we not like, we have to hold up people accountable when. When it is this brazen? This isn't like, like, you know, hey, I had too many beers and I own it or something like that. Like, like, they're beating the. Out of people and then not like, for. They don't stop and they're not.
- [119:47]
Interviewer
Yeah. And like old ladies. Like, I saw a video this morning. Was this, like, old lady where they even did a chokehold on an old.
- [119:53]
Eric Ballier
Yeah.
- [119:54]
Interviewer
Is that allowed?
- [119:55]
Eric Ballier
No, I've been.
- [119:55]
Interviewer
Is that part of your training?
- [119:57]
Eric Ballier
No, And I've been vocal about the. The chokeholds, too. Like, you know, again, it goes back to, like, what are you trying to accomplish. Accomplish? When you grab someone in a. In a carotid or a chokehold, like, the. That's by policy goes into the deadly force, even if. Even if it's momentarily. But, you know, you're like, what are. Like, what are we doing? Like, this is not. This is not us. This is not what. Like, what I did. What, like, friends that I risked my lives for, and they risked their lives for me. Like, this is not what we did. And it's. It's painful to see. I feel for the. Like, there's no winners in this. But ultimately, like the general. Like, we serve the public. We are public servants. And when you lose the trust of the public, you've lost. Like, I don't know. 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. Not yet.
- [121:07]
Interviewer
Do you think anyone is raising hell right now inside Internal Affairs?
- [121:14]
Eric Ballier
Some of the people I worked with, to the extent they can, they are. They are vocalizing the fact that like.
- [121:20]
Interviewer
Like, this is not okay. So there are people inside the agency saying and actively voicing concern for these practices they are.
- [121:29]
Eric Ballier
There is a concern that they get crushed for it.
- [121:34]
Interviewer
Like they're, they're afraid of speaking out.
- [121:36]
Eric Ballier
Yeah. 100. Without question. Some of them will do the right thing. Some of them will. Will. Most of them just want to like, retire and.
- [121:51]
Interviewer
Then speak out like you're doing.
- [121:54]
Eric Ballier
I retired almost two years ago, so I got a little bit of, I got a little bit of daylight, but.
- [121:58]
Interviewer
Yeah, I kind of wish you hadn't actually.
- [122:00]
Eric Ballier
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, when you see career FBI agents. So not, not executives. But for example, there was an FBI group supervisor in Minneapolis who resigned because he was told to change the, 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. 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. Three at the three year mark. Now he can kind of run his own cases by now, by, you know, a few years later, maybe he gets, 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, the wherewithal and, and the courage to say, I'm not. This is not what I signed up for. Yeah. So kudos to him.
- [123:27]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [123:27]
Eric Ballier
Got my respect.
- [123:29]
Interviewer
Yeah. I think we need a lot more of him and a lot more of you. We need more people raising alarms, speaking out.
- [123:35]
Eric Ballier
Like, it doesn't make you anti law enforcement. I'm not anti law enforcement. Like, I'm. And I, I believe in strong borders and immigration enforcement and all that other sort of stuff. But like, 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.
- [123:58]
Interviewer
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 3,000American, I mean, immigrants had to be deported every year. That's every day. Sorry. It was something like a million. Something you wanted deported every year, which is about 3,000 a day. Which event, you know, we had a president, President Trump, who ran on the camp. His campaign was part of it was, we're going to go after the fight. The criminals, right. Criminal immigrants were out there and they have no place in America and they should be deported. And I'm, 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, and, and which also leads me to think, like, the amount of time and resources that are being spent in going after the fathers and the mothers who have done nothing wrong, who are working. In businesses and all around the U.S. aren't we actually getting distracted from the job at hand, which is actually protecting Americans from the violent criminals that you were trying to catch. Much from the start, isn't this sort of a. You're using those resources, divert, diverting these resources and keeping America more unsafe and unprotected in many ways. What would you say about that?
- [126:01]
Eric Ballier
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, and, and this is where I do put onus on the department and the agency because they've, 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. There's human trafficking cases that are going on work, 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 you know, by way of example, the same guy I've talked about, Jack, he's been sent to these, 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.
- [127:20]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [127:21]
Eric Ballier
And if you don't think that those organizations are constantly adapting and changing and exploiting like. Absolutely. So and I use that as a, as a first hand example that I can say conclusively like we're losing on. We're. We've taken him and some others out of that. That pressure that we've been putting on Sinaloa 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, 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 LA or Chicago or wherever they are, because so they're being.
- [128:19]
Interviewer
Deployed to these cities for these immigration raids, but they're still working on the case places that.
- [128:23]
Eric Ballier
Because they have that passion, they have that drive and they're like, well it, I'm not, I'm not gonna like not do the work that I was asked to do or believe in. You know, and I understand we don't always get to pick and choose what we, what we work, but at the same time, like, yeah, so all of.
- [128:40]
Interviewer
This is actually keeping America more unprotected, I think unsafer than it was initially by not by diverting all these resources to the current immigration rights.
- [128:51]
Eric Ballier
Anyways, I think it has, I think it is creating a lot of unforeseen or unintended vulnerabilities from these other transnational criminal organizations because like people are distracted. And it's not just, 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, the JTTFs of the world and stuff like that. And they're doing civil immigration.
- [129:21]
Interviewer
Yeah. And these terrorist organizations have reported on a few of it. Them and these criminal groups and the Sinalo 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.
- [129:39]
Eric Ballier
They pay attention.
- [129:40]
Interviewer
They pay attention.
- [129:41]
Eric Ballier
Attention.
- [129:42]
Interviewer
So they're. 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. So I'm greater good.
- [130:16]
Eric Ballier
Like my wife. 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. Like, I can. That's the. I can live with the people not liking me. That's okay.
- [130:28]
Interviewer
Well, I. I wish there were a million more Eric Valiers out there.
- [130:31]
Eric Ballier
Thanks.
- [130:32]
Interviewer
Thank you so much for coming on.
- [130:34]
Eric Ballier
It was a pleasure. Thank you.