Mariana van Zeller

Absolutely.

I've been covering the cartel for many years now.

And I sort of wanted to do a story about cartel presence in the U.S.

And once we started researching it, I realized that actually the story should be about all the things that we don't know about cartel presence in the U.S., including the fact that they're in small-town America.

So one of our first shoots for that episode was in Georgia.

And I don't know if you saw the episode.

You did?

Oh, thank you.

And yeah, it was in Georgia.

And we started with a murder investigation of this woman who was tortured and they cut off her fingers and then eventually killed her.

And she was killed by the cartel.

And it was in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.

And then we followed the investigation and realized that they're everywhere and particularly like to operate in small town America.

Yes, exactly.

Less law enforcement, easier to hide the drugs and have their distribution networks.

Right.

And they're all armed with AK-47s and AR-15s.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

You know what was so interesting about that story is that in order to get access to the cartel in the U.S., we actually had to go down to Mexico and gain permission and have them say yes.