Kingpins & Coyotes
25 Years as a Special Agent Hunting Drug Cartel Bosses and Human Smugglers
Kingpins & Coyotes takes readers inside the multi-billion-dollar shadow economy operating along the US/Mexico border, where drug trafficking and human smuggling no longer exist as separate crimes, but as interconnected, adaptive networks built for profit and survival.
Drawing on more than twenty-five years as a Special Agent, Eric Balliet exposes how these organizations actually function: not as isolated operations, but as coordinated systems of logistics, subcontractors, and cross-border supply chains. From cartel stash houses in Arizona to clandestine air routes in Mexico, he traces the movement of drugs, money, and people through a single, evolving ecosystem.
At the center is the takedown of a major smuggling network led by a trafficker known as “Ricardo.” What began as one arrest unraveled a decentralized enterprise moving multi-ton quantities of narcotics, revealing how cartels outsource operations, leverage U.S.-based facilitators, and scale like legitimate businesses. That case opens the door to a broader, rarely seen reality: the infrastructure behind trafficking, and the people who sustain it.
Through firsthand operations, debriefings, and case files, Balliet introduces the gatekeepers, transporters, and brokers who move both narcotics and migrants across the border, alongside the agents working to dismantle them. The result is a ground-level view of a system that adapts faster than enforcement can respond.
Kingpins & Coyotes goes beyond story. It breaks down how these networks operate. How technology, finance, and logistics have transformed modern trafficking, and how human smuggling has evolved into a structured, profit-driven industry. It also confronts the hard truth: enforcement often disrupts activity, but rarely dismantles the underlying network.
At the same time, the book reveals the human cost. Migrants face exploitation, coercion, and violence. Law enforcement operates under constant pressure, navigating limited resources, legal constraints, and shifting policy priorities.
This is not a political argument—it’s an operational reality. The border is not a single problem to be solved, but a system shaped by global demand, economic pressure, and institutional gaps. And until those forces are addressed, the networks will continue to adapt.
Part memoir, part investigative narrative, and part inside look at transnational crime, Kingpins & Coyotes delivers a rare, unfiltered perspective on what’s really happening at America’s border; who profits, who pays, and why the problem persists.
What People are saying
“In the hunt for El Chapo, Eric Balliet was a key figure who never let up. His leadership over the HSI team was instrumental in a massive, relentless, and coordinated effort to bring down a global kingpin and dismantle one of the world’s most dangerous criminal networks. This is the gold standard for relentless commitment to justice that proves that no target is out of reach when elite teams work as one.”
— Ray Donovan, CEO of Stack21 Solutions / Former Chief of Operations DEA
“After two decades covering black markets, I know how rarely an insider account gets the mechanics right. Kingpins & Coyotes does. Eric Balliet puts you inside the wiretap rooms, the informant meetings, the cross-border coordination — and shows exactly how drug trafficking and human smuggling operate as two sides of the same machine. It’s the rare book that’s both a page-turner and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what’s actually happening on America’s southern border.”
— Mariana van Zeller, Emmy & Peabody Award-winning journalist and Host of National Geographic’s Trafficked
“Kingpins & Coyotes is a gripping in-depth look at federal border and immigration law enforcement. Eric Balliet, a twenty-five-year veteran in the ongoing battle, provides a knowledgeable insider’s account of the professional and personal challenges faced by our nation’s first-line defenders of US border integrity and homeland security. From his early days in Border Patrol and as a US Customs agent, to his career as a Special Agent with HSI, his story spans the distance from the US-Mexico border to cabinet-level echelons of the Department of Homeland Security. To get the true story of America’s borders being overrun by illegal immigrants and drug traffickers, Kingpins & Coyotes is a must read.”
— Mike Fredericks, author of award-winning Busting Drug Dealers: Diaries of a DEA Special Agent
Excerpts
The capture of El Chapo
Thirty minutes.
It would be the longest thirty minutes of my twenty-five-year career in federal law enforcement. There would be no radio chatter. No updates from helicopters. No running play-by-play from surveillance teams. Just silence.
…At 6:11 a.m., the chime again broke the silence. Another message from Jake. I looked at the screen and read the seven words slowly. Then I read them again. And again. It took a moment for it to sink in.
“We got him, boys, we got him.”
Holy shit.
Nacho’s cash
When comparing human smugglers and drug smugglers, in the end they all work for and operate within the same criminal network. The plaza bosses call the shots on how the human smugglers can operate. The drug smuggling activity took priority over any human smuggling in the same area. The drugs were the main revenue stream for the network yet human smuggling generated millions of dollars a year for the plaza boss and the criminal network as a whole. Think of it as passive income in the sense that if a human smuggler is crossing 100 aliens per week through Nacho Paez’s plaza, and Nacho Paez is taxing that human smuggler $500 per head, that is $50,000 paid per week to Nacho’s organization by that one human smuggler simply for the authorization to use Nacho’s turf. There may be ten to fifteen human smugglers in the plaza all crossing up to 100 aliens per week. You can see how that revenue stream adds up fast.
Death by automobile
There have been multiple cases over the years where 40 or more migrants died in the back of tractor trailers from hyperthermia. I remember one case in Arizona where a coyote fled in a sedan from law enforcement and eventually escaped on foot. The officers thought the car was abandoned but didn’t realize there were two migrants still in the trunk. The car was tagged to be towed and left on the side of the road in the Arizona heat. The two in the trunk were cooked to death and eventually discovered days later. That is the unfortunate, yet real toll of human smuggling.