Mariana VanZeller

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 we started with the 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, yeah, realized that they're everywhere and particularly like to operate in small-town America.

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

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.

Because a lot of these groups have people that work for them in the U.S.

Obviously, the U.S.

is the end goals where they're sending their drugs.

And so eventually he said, OK, we've got you.

And it was all set up and we were supposed to meet them in Minnesota.

We get there and then we waited and waited and waited for days.

I'm like, I never showed up.

I want people to see many of these traffickers.

Again, we do not condone what they do.