Behind The Story Of ICE Agents Ambushed By A Dangerous Drug Cartel And Left To Die
This week on my podcast "The Sitdown" A Crime History Podcast, I interviewed a former ICE Agent, Victor Avila. His story is among the most interesting but also sickening cases I've heard. It shows the carelessness of some in the agencies of the government and the very little help they give to agents and highlights some of the many dark things this country does!
Agent Avila was born in Texas, the son of immigrants from Mexico in the border town of El Paso. He began his career as a state parole officer ultimately joining INS at the time and eventually working directly for ICE which was formed in 2003. He as any good agent does rose the career ladder bringing in human smugglers, drug traffickers, extortion artists, money launderers and other violent and depraved cartel members. He was doing his job and was working to make the people that send tons of drugs and traffic women and children pay for their behavior.
By 2011, he would move to Mexico City and was working his way to becoming a supervisor and growing as an agent. Sadly though in February of that year his life changed. He would be asked by his overseers alongside another agent who had just been reassigned to Mexico that he had recently met to travel from Mexico City to the city of Monterrey, 11 hours or so away to pick up "equipment" for another case. He was instructed to drive as the Suburban they were driving would be filled to the brim with tracking gear and more. He would be given no escort and was tasked to drive with the agent alone.
Now keep in mind, Mr. Avila would make the case that to go to Monterrey from Mexico City, he would have to drive on the extremely dangerous Highway 57. Weeks before this incident, strict travel warnings were in place against driving the highway due to it being controlled by the extremely dangerous Los Zetas Cartel. He was instructed to do it and they set out on the journey even against the wishes of Avila who made the case to his supervisors to which the overseer responded "I'm not aware of security risks".
Ultimately as they were driving on the way back from Monterrey, they would be approached by two speeding vehicles. The occupants had long guns and were instructing the agents to pull over. They became boxed in. Luckily the vehicle was bulletproof but they were forced to pull over. He then tells me the extremely awful story
That day Jaime Zapata would die on that highway. Victor Avila would be shot multiple times. This was a literal suicide mission. The government was negligent and puts its agent in harms way. They would ultimately be sued but the lawsuit was very hard for someone like Victor to win. His overseers were promoted, which is sad to think about. Earlier this year, Avila was told that it's probable that they weren't even picking up equipment they were just picking up the personal belongings for big shots in the office. They were doing gopher work in essence.
The soulless people that shot Agent Zapata and Agent Avila were both given life sentences and sit at ADMAX Florence, however they will for some reason be "resentenced" in March. The other five people involved in this case were given deals for small amounts of information. Why are we giving people like this deals? I have been unable to find most of them in the federal system and one has even been released. His whereabouts are unknown and he could possibly be in this country. We would also find out during this disgusting ordeal that weapons used to attack the agents in this case were bought in Texas and walked into Mexico.
We also found out was that these weapons as well as the many weapons used in Mexico were provided by the American government in an awful failure of an operation known as "Fast and Furious". Most of the drug cartels that are funneling drugs into the country were trained at some point by America and the guns they use to defend themselves have likely been provided by America. The MANY failures in this case were discussed in front of the GOP Oversight Committee
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In a small show of good faith the same government that failed the two agents took a victory lap and passed a law to protect agents in small ways in the future. Keep in mind, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others declined the bill multiple times.
Agent Avila and his family nor the Zapata family were invited to the ceremony.
In the rest of the interview we discussed what Mr. Avila has seen in the past and the present at the US border. We also spoke about how incremental changes can be made in the failed Drug War as well as designating drug cartels as foreign terrorists organizations and what it can do to significantly improve the conditions we face here.
Mr. Avila is a hero who was treated extremely poorly. We remember his fallen partner
You can listen to the FULL episode on iTunes here: