Narco Mennonites (2026) s01e02 Episode Script
Three Blind Mules
1
♪
(soft dramatic music) ♪
♪
Johan Harms: Are we rolling yet?
Producer: Yes. Any time.
Johan Harms: (laughs)
My name is the Johan Harms,
and my dad name
is Abraham Harms.
And I'm here to set
the record straight.
♪
It's a famous name.
A lot of people know him,
and my brother Enrique.
To me he was like, amazing dad.
I love him.
Weekends, when he was
coming home after his trips,
he played games with us kids
at the house,
and we were all exciting.
People that know him, love him.
He wasn't this bad person
who wanted to be
in the drug business.
That wasn't him.
He was a small trafficker.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Like he was
one of the best persons
on planet Earth.
♪
He got into this
marijuana business,
but it wasn't that he wanted it.
He got into this business
because of
life took him there.
♪
He did it for us.
So can someone be a drug dealer
and be right with God?
That's the question.
♪
(soft clicking music beat) ♪
♪
(tense dramatic music) ♪
♪
♪
HSI Agent: The drug game
is never ending.
♪
Whenever you take out,
or chop off the head
of one snake,
another snake arises.
♪
Being an undercover agent
is challenging.
It's a mental game.
Thinking in the way
the criminal would think.
Trying to be cool
under pressure.
Being quiet enough
to look normal,
but asking enough questions
to covertly gather intel.
There's a fine line on
being able to execute
the mission safely,
and then really
put yourself in harm's way
and doing yourself disservice
in any investigation.
I think it's the
best gig in the world.
You get to go out and play
cops and robbers every day.
It's the same stuff you're doing
and imagining when you're a kid,
you get to live that out
in real life
and get paid for it.
Just letting border patrol know
that we're gonna be out there,
one, so they don't mess with us,
and two,
we're a long ways from help.
So, they'll be our first
call that we make
if anything pops off.
When the regular citizen
thinks of the word Mennonite,
they think of a quiet,
very religious,
proper group people
that are just
doing the right thing
and living a good life.
The simple life.
They're very into
their agricultural.
And, it's a very peaceful
group of people.
But just like every society has,
the Mennonite population,
it's a very small fraction
of people
who commit crimes,
and a lot of that crime
is drug smuggling.
The majority of the narcotics
that we seize
at the ports of entry
are, we call it
deep concealment,
to where it's concealed
inside a non-factory
compartment of a vehicle,
whether it be a gas tank,
a frame rail, an engine block
Johan Harms: You can find
different compartments
in cars, and seats,
and car seats.
Mennonites were so trusted,
like at borders,
like when you were
approaching the border,
that you were just good to go.
My dad, he told us
what he was doing
and like what was going on,
and unfortunately we accepted,
but he didn't force us.
Andrew Mitrovica:
My understanding is that Abe
enlisted the help of his sons,
particularly Enrique.
HSI Agent: Enrique Harms,
he's comparable to
El Chapo Guzmán
of the Sinaloa Cartel.
He's at the top of
the food chain.
Oscar Hagelsieb: Anybody in,
along the community,
especially in
the Valley of El Paso,
has heard of the Harms.
We knew that the Harms are
running the Mennonite Mafia.
It was kind of like this
mythical figure, right?
HSI Agent: Cuauhtémoc,
Mexico is a town
about two hours south of
the US-Mexico border,
and it is a Mennonite colony,
and home to thousands and
thousands of Mennonites.
(soft dramatic music) ♪
♪
Sam Quinones:
There's this community,
laid out in, like,
almost perfect geometry.
The roads are like
perfect straight lines.
Their collective style
of very efficient
cattle farming and
dairy farming,
and making a nationally
known cheese,
in Mexico known as
Queso Menonita.
Johan Harms: My dad, he was
in the cheese business,
way before he started
into the drug trafficking.
Back in Cuauhtémoc, back then,
there were different
cheese factories.
So he was working
with this company,
and like, he bought
cheese and like and
he went all over Mexico
to look for market.
And he was doing pretty good,
he was making a good living.
Was good money in it.
Then after some time,
he finds the American Crisco,
and they love this Crisco
in Cuauhtémoc.
If you could get
a load of Crisco,
you would be selling it
in a day or two,
and he could make good money,
double or triple the price.
That first time,
when he got the Crisco,
like he was coming
to the Mexican customs,
and show them the permit.
Like everything was good.
After the third or fourth time
when he came to customs
and showed the permit, 'No, '
they were telling him,
'this is a fake one.'
So, they just pulled
the truck aside,
and let it sit there.
And like, and it was in
middle of May somewhere, and
like in the desert by Juarez,
like it gets really warm.
And the Crisco
would start melting.
And people that were driving by,
the agents just took boxes of
Crisco, and just gave it away,
and that was my dad's savings.
(chuckles)
That was a really
tough time for him,
it was a really tough situation.
All the money that
he had been saving up,
he spent into it and then after,
like he was getting a loan,
trying to get it solved,
and, but it was just
not working.
All the years of hard working
to get somewhere and to get
something start up
and then just all of a sudden,
like, you just lose everything.
By that time, like,
life was like really tough.
He owed money
and he needed to pay
and like, was high interest,
and he couldn't,
just couldn't make it for it.
Like and then, all of a sudden,
there's this genius
comes up with this idea,
and tells him,
"Hey, you know what?"
Like, "I got some
marijuana, like-
Probably, you can get
into the business
and sell one of this stuff
and pay off your debt."
And so he did.
He didn't wanted to be
this drug dealer.
But
Being in a drug
business isn't easy.
It's, um-
It's a tough life.
You get used to it, and then,
you don't see it
as a sin anymore.
Andrew Mitrovica: Beneath the
surface, there is something
much more sinister taking place.
Like many Canadians,
I thought Mennonites were
God-fearing, law abiding,
hardworking citizens
who had the best interests
of their children at heart,
who worked an honest life,
who believed that,
faith was important.
Sam Quinones: They believed
that God rewarded
your life of hard work
with entry into Heaven,
and so prohibitions
against riding bikes,
radio, TV, rubber tires
on the tractors
You had to wear your
overalls until they stank.
You did not wash them.
Weird things like this
began to get people
excommunicated and then
they couldn't be hired.
Eventually, a culture
of flouting prohibitions,
takes root in these communities,
which has its final expression,
I would argue,
in drug trafficking,
♪
HSI Agent:
Even in the Mennonite community,
as religious as they are,
sometimes they fall down
on their luck.
And there is an
opportunity there,
in that community,
to smuggle narcotics.
Johan Harms: In the 90s,
the crop price dropped
so bad that year,
almost every farmer in
Cuauhtémoc
got into big debts.
And that's when a lot of people
walk up to you,
that were judging you
for a long time
for what you did,
and now they're
coming up to you and asking,
'What can we do?'
'How can we survive this,
this crisis?'
I don't want to be in
drug business.
I don't want to be
a drug dealer,
but I have this farmland,
and I have been doing this
all my life.
My dad did it.
My grandpa did it.
Not that they want
to be drug dealers,
but believe you and me,
people will do
things that they will not do,
like if it comes to money,
money is money and,
and people do things.
Sam Quinones: Through the '90s
and into the 2000s
the Harms sons,
Enrique Harms, Johan Harms,
begin to develop
the drug business
that their father
bequeathed them.
Johan Harms, he decides
he's going to use his money
to get into the movie business.
In Mexico, there is
a long tradition
of straight-to-video,
B-movie, narco shoot-em-ups,
(gun shots)
just about drug trafficking and,
and all that kind of stuff.
(loud guns shots)
Johan Harms
apparently decides that
this is his life's work
and his life's dream.
He puts a lot of money
into producing these movies,
and in one movie,
which I have seen,
takes the guy's head and
suffocates the guy,
by sticking his head into
a big pile of cocaine.
♪
They've gone to hell.
Fine, let's go partner.
Johan Harms:
I was living my dream.
(chuckles)
It was exciting.
I was getting famous and,
and it was super exciting,
you know, the work
that I was, was doing.
Andrew Mitrovica:
Abe was quite content
trafficking in
pretty poor-quality dope.
Enrique seized the opportunity.
And unlike his father,
I think, was more a visionary
insofar as he knew
he had to adapt.
The BC bud was flooding
into the US market.
The Mennonite product
was really seedy.
It wasn't very good quality
And like good businessmen,
they anticipated how the market
was going to change
and they adapted to the market.
So they diversified
into cocaine, heroin
Made a hell of a lot more money.
♪
Johan Harms: It's a tough life.
It's not, it's not easy.
Like, you get into
tough situations,
and you are facing
with tough people,
and you gotta stand up
for yourself.
Not that you want to be this
main person, but sometimes,
like, you really have to
stand up for yourself,
and like that's in,
in every single business.
Like it's all over, like you
gotta defend your business.
You gotta defend yourself
because like,
if you're not going to be
standing up for yourself,
the people, they will
eat you alive.
Like, that's not that
you want to be this bad person,
but sometimes, like,
you gotta face,
face whatever
presents to you, right?
Like, if you really
got a tough situation,
okay, I would bring a gun along,
but not-(chuckles)
that wasn't the normal me right?
Oscar Hagelsieb:
I grew up around Socorro,
late '80s, early '90s.
The thing about Socorro
at that time when
one of the main highways that
the cartels used to use
to smuggle their drugs
into the United States
went directly
through that main street
in Socorro.
So at the time that I was
growing up in that area,
Socorro was one of the major
thoroughfares for,
for the cocaine and marijuana
that was coming in from the
Juarez cartel.
So in that little town,
everybody knew who was involved.
You were involved or you knew
people that were involved.
It was just common knowledge.
The ironic thing about
the Mennonites is that
we always heard
of the Mennonites
being this religious
holy faction,
that they would turn away
from modern luxuries
like electricity, and they,
all they wanted to do was,
you know, live by the Bible.
But all we knew growing up
is when the Mennonites
were in town,
when they would come in
for the weekends,
they were the hardiest partiers!
(drunken shouting)
That was ironic because,
when we would hear that,
you know, about the Mennonites,
you know, being so religious,
we're like, 'Well, not the ones
that we hang out with 'cause
those guys come hard,
and they party,
downing their bottles
of Jack Daniels
and partaking in any party drug
that they can
get their hands on.'
♪
Sam Quinones: In 2003,
I was working on a book
about Mexican immigration.
I get to know a local
social worker, and one night
he begins to tell me
about the Mennonite community,
about how the community
is really
completely in advanced decay.
First, he says, there's a
terrible problem
with inbreeding.
And I go, "what are you-
the Mennonites from Mexico
you're talking about now?"
I- it just didn't
jive with what I knew
about these people, right?
And, you know, the other thing
is, and we're driving along,
the other thing is they're
major drug traffickers.
I say, "Whoa, you know, pull up-
What are you-Pull over!
I gotta hear this!"
You know, he goes on to say,
"I have a client, a woman
whose husband was
a huge informant
for the Bureau of Narcotics
of Oklahoma,
as they put together
the largest drug bust
in the history of the State,
up to that point,
in 1999.
I don't know if
you've heard of a guy
by the name of Enrique Harms."
And I had, like, never heard
of that guy before.
And like, "Yeah,
he's kind of the capo.
His dad was the first one."
This is the most bizarre story
I've ever heard,
as a journalist, man,
and I consider myself
to have a highly refined
journalistic compass radar
right in here somewhere,
and it was going haywire.
It was like,
'get down there, go start-
someone's gonna do the
narco Mennonite story
before you do. (laughs)
So I went down to Cuauhtémoc,
to the Mennonite campos,
as they're called.
I go down there and
the first thing that happens,
is I realize that
I need to rent a car.
So I go into the Budget
rent-a-car, and I say,
"What's the cheapest car
you've got?"
And they point to, (laughs)
they point to a gold Chevy Love,
which is about as large
as your kitchen table,
okay, it's really dinky.
I'm like, "O-kay,
I guess I'll rent that."
And I'm driving off the lot, and
of course, this is a rural area,
there's trucks and
pickup trucks. That's it.
No one's got a Chevy Love.
And you know, I got down there
and you could see
the remarkable development
that was due to the
very industrious,
hard-working
Mennonite community.
The farms were perfect.
No trash, no litter,
very perfect roads.
Right? They just go straight.
It's the middle of the desert
and talk about making
the desert bloom.
That's exactly what Mennonites
had done by then.
Here I found this entire
community, that it was planted
in the middle of the old world
that they imposed on themselves,
but unable to avoid
the new world,
that was all around them.
The old world, I began to see,
was definitely damaging,
harmful to them,
because they use this
old form of,
of educating their kids,
which was almost useless.
So I went to a
one-room schoolhouse,
I mean, you'd think this would
be more at home in like
1870 in Nebraska or
something like that?
You know, where you have
one teacher,
and you have kids of all ages
sitting there,
writing out in chalk,
on these little black
chalkboard slates, Scripture.
The teacher was a farmer.
He didn't know anything.
He asked me, literally,
this guy asked me,
"6 times 7, that's 42, right?"
'Yeah. Yeah,
that's 42 all right.'
You know, but this was
the level of knowledge
that these teachers had.
There's almost none.
And so these kids graduated
from this one-room schoolhouse,
and that's all the education
they ever got. Right?
And so they were vulnerable.
They could not really get jobs.
♪
Anyway, for the next
several days,
I drive around the
Mennonite colonies
and talk to people.
I was asking questions
about trafficking,
and I saw it was going to be
a difficult story to write,
because of the fact that
I really didn't know much
about this community and
I didn't speak the language,
and I was clearly an outsider.
I talked to this one guy
and he said,
'There is a guy who owns
a restaurant out on
the main highway, and,
and his name is Enrique Harms.
I go, "Enrique Harms, okay.
That's the same name as
the Mennonite couple."
And so I go to the
restaurant La Huerta,
and I meet Enrique Harms,
the owner of the restaurant.
Thin little guy,
face like a ferret,
and he begins to tell me about
how he had a cocaine habit,
and but now he's doing better.
And now he's got
this restaurant.
I stayed there a week.
I go by that Huerta restaurant
one more time,
I'm eating there,
reading my notes, doing-
and all of a sudden Enrique
Harms sits down in front of me.
He goes, "What are you
still doing here?"
Now, this does not feel
very welcoming.
You know, I'm like,
"I'm here, I'm leaving actually.
I'm about to head-
got a plane later today."
"Oh, okay."
So I finish up,
I pay the bill, I walk outside,
and all of a sudden,
he appears next to me.
"Hey, let me take your picture."
And at that point,
I start getting, like,
a little defensive.
"Hey, screw you, man.
You're not taking my picture!"
I get in my car, and I head off
down the very, very long highway
into Cuauhtémoc.
And as I'm driving,
I look in my rearview mirror
and I realize
I am being followed.
♪
I look and there's this
purple Dodge Stratus,
smoked windows, no plates.
And that's when I really began
to get terrified, honestly.
Nobody really knows I'm here
except my girlfriend
up in Chicago.
So I realize I just gotta make
a run for it, you know?
And so I hit the road
out of town.
I come to a stoplight,
and I see a big,
forest green,
Chevy pickup coming.
And this guy pulls up
in his pickup truck.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
And he reaches down
into the well of his car.
And I think right there,
I believe,
he's gonna pull out
a pistol and shoot me.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Up to this point,
I had been gripped
by the most razor sharp,
crystalline terror,
I have ever felt.
I am in real,
serious trouble now.
♪
And he reaches down into
the well of the truck,
and I really thought
he was gonna come out
with a gun and just
kill me right there.
Instead he comes out with a
digital camera,
and he holds it up like this,
and he starts taking my picture.
Chi-ching, chi-ching, chi-ching,
I'm like
The light changes,
all the cars go,
and I just squeal out of there
and I drive into the
first business I can find.
And I get out of my car and it's
2 o'clock lunchtime in Mexico.
Nobody's there but this kid.
20 year-old kid, who's kind of
minding the store,
and I go up to him and I'm like,
"The narcos-
The narco Mennonites are
after me, man. Call the cops!"
This kid all alone,
he begins to hyperventilate.
He begins to try to push me.
"Leave. Get out, get out!
We don't want you here!"
You know? I tell him,
"Look, man, I'm not moving
till you call the cops.
Get somebody over here."
Finally he gets the picture.
He calls the cops.
The cops come about ten minutes
later. It seemed endless.
It seemed like they would
never arrive.
And finally they get there,
and they take me up
to the police department.
And so
a plan is devised
for two of the cops
to take me to
Chihuahua City Airport.
One guy is driving me
and the other guy is driving
my gold Chevy Love, right?
The guy driving me,
lays his AK-47 on my lap
as he drives, and we take off.
It's supposed to take
hour and plus,
to get to the airport.
I think we did it in 45 minutes.
We were blazing, blazing fast.
We get to the airport,
I get onto the plane,
I am like almost bent down
and kissed the plane,
you know, as I got on to it.
That was my
bizarre experience with
the narco Mennonites of Mexico.
♪
(low tense dramatic music) ♪
♪
Raul: In 2012, we started seeing
a lot more of the marijuana
being smuggled through the
Presidio, Texas port of entry.
We would see utility trailers
are being loaded with marijuana
in the frame rails,
utility gas tanks,
like those big diesel tanks
that are in the back.
They would put
a tank within a tank,
in the regular gas tank
of pickups,
and they would put a steel box
full of contraband.
HSI Agent: Mennonites are
welders by trade.
They are really, really good
at welding farm equipment,
and they're really,
really good at welding
non-factory compartments.
And inside those
non-factory compartments,
is where they hide their drugs.
Raul: So during
the interviews of these
drivers of these vehicles,
they would always come up with,
you know, we answered
an ad in the paper.
HSI Agent: There were
individuals from Mexico,
that were looking for work.
And part of their way
to look for work is they
were looking for different ads
in the newspapers.
Many of them encountered
the same ad,
someone requesting drivers,
who had tourist Visas to
enter the United States.
And they were requesting
those drivers
either deliver products,
legal products,
in the United States,
or pick up some farm equipment
in the U.S.
and transport that equipment
back to Mexico.
Unbeknownst to them,
those drivers
were given a company car.
But that company car
had narcotics in it.
And so they began smuggling
drugs into the United States,
and they didn't even know
what they were doing.
So, were these drivers
Mennonites?
Raul: No, these, most of these
drivers were
Mexican citizens from
Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico.
And in Chihuahua,
they do see a lot of Mennonites
because Cuauhtémoc, Anahuac
isn't too far from there.
A lot of the drivers
that we were encountering,
were describing the person
that hired 'em
and put the ads in the paper as
Mennonites, or 'Mennonas.'
We named this operation
Three Blind Mules.
A mule is a person
that smuggles contraband
for a criminal organization.
HSI Agent: So part of our
investigation was
to try to figure out
who was putting these ads
in the Mexican newspaper.
We started asking,
"Hey, who did you call?"
"What was the phone number
you were given?"
"What were the instructions
you were given?"
"Do you remember what
the guy looked like
that delivered you
this vehicle?"
That happened over
a course of several months,
to where we, now we started to
get a few nicknames.
Raul: Some were Kwon Wiebe,
Mario Blanco was a,
was a good one.
Oscar Silva was another one.
There was just
a lot of different ones.
You know, we started
hearing a lot of
Engineer.
You know, the 'ingeniero Silva',
or 'ingeniero' or 'inge'.
HSI Agent: There were several
drivers that stated
that the engineers
are the one that hire me.
And, that's all we had to go by
at the very beginning.
Once we started to realize that,
hey, this is one person
that was responsible for this,
we started trying to get
as many identifiers,
physical characteristics
of what that person looked like,
and to start to narrow down
a target profile of
who we believed was responsible
for these newspaper ads.
He was described as a
tall, white man,
a Mennonite man,
that spoke Spanish
and spoke German.
Raul: That person was identified
as David Giesbrecht Fehr.
HSI Agent: So once we identified
David Giesbrecht Fehr
as our main target, we ran
a target profile on him
and tried to find every
bit of information
we could on his past.
David Giesbrecht Fehr had a
history of narcotics smuggling.
We found out that
he himself used to be a mule.
He was arrested
in Presidio, Texas,
for bringing drugs across
the US-Mexico border.
He went to prison,
and then he was
later deported back to Mexico.
We felt like he hadn't
learned his lesson
from when he was caught
the first time,
and, he was back
in his old ways.
This time a little bit smarter,
a little bit wiser.
And so instead of now of,
of being that mule
and taking all the risk,
he was assuming
very little of the risk,
and just drawing up
the blueprint in Mexico.
He was the one that was,
you know, had the master plan.
And, and that plan
was working for a long time.
David Giesbrecht Fehr's
operation
was a well-oiled machine,
until it wasn't.
Producer: Working?
Clapboard: (clap)
David G. Fehr: My name is
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
♪
I'm doing this, just because
I need to clean my name.
I grew up in a Mennonite family.
My dad is born in Mexico.
My grandpa's in Canada.
We were nine in the family.
I was the, the seventh.
It was Peter,
Hanz, Maria, Willie,
Henry, Justina, me,
and then Margaret
and then Danny - nine.
Um, Hanz or John, he got-
he died on the '86
when I was 13 years old,
drinking and driving.
He was my best brother.
♪
Yeah. Things happens in my life,
and I got, I had a really hard
time for that.
♪
My dad was kicked out
before I born,
he was kicked out
from the Mennonites,
because he started
driving truck.
He started dealing with Mexican
people and use electricity.
♪
I never in my life
have used overalls,
and never in my life
had a Mennonite school.
I never had a
Mennonite girlfriend,
never a Mennonite wife.
I grew up with Mexican people.
Mennonites, they are like-
to David Giesbrecht Fehr,
you're drug dealer, you're
murderer or something like that,
they go away from me, something.
That's why I'm here. I'm not a
drug dealer. I'm not a killer.
I'm not a murderer. I'm-
I'm legal person.
That's why I'm coming
for this. Yes.
HSI Agent: The next phase
of the investigation,
we tried to figure out
how do we defeat this?
How do we get ahead of this?
Because right now, there is
an unlimited amount
of people in Mexico,
they're gonna answer
these newspaper ads.
And if we don't put
a squash to this,
we are going to be
inundated with it.
The only option that we had
was to start delivering
those narcotics
from the border to their
destination in United States,
and we needed the blind mules'
help to make that happen.
Raul: So some of the
next steps that we did,
we started talking
with some of the drivers.
You know, after they tell us
they don't know anything
about this, they didn't know
anything, that any drugs,
or contraband was in
the vehicles.
And, you know, some of them
were like,
'No, you're lying to us.'
You know, we had to go
and show 'em.
HSI Agent: In interviewing
these blind mules,
we would inform them
that the vehicle they had,
they were driving,
had narcotics in it.
Obviously, it was news to them.
They were shocked.
Most of them were
really, really upset.
And they wanted to do
whatever it took
to get back at
David Giesbrecht Fehr,
for putting them
in that position.
And they agreed to cooperate
with the investigation.
David G. Fehr: Supposedly they
caught the driver,
and this driver goes like,
'Yes, it is him'
But, it's not me.
The drivers usually when
they caught them, just go home,
and just be free
to show somebody, like-
and that's what they tried
to do with me.
I- they want me to show
somebody like,
to put, to put somebody in.
Who do you want me to put in?
Raul: And then
they got mad, you know,
and they said, "Hey, you know,
where're you supposed to go?"
"Well, I'm supposed
to go to Albuquerque
or I'm supposed to go to
Tulsa, Oklahoma"
And I said, "All right,
well, are you willing
to help the US government?"
And, of course, you know,
some of them were all for it.
And we did quite a few of these
controlled deliveries,
to different cities in the US.
We're going to take it
to its final destination,
in order to apprehend
more individuals,
higher in the cartel.
HSI Agent: We're driving these
drug-laden vehicles
all across the country.
We were all over the map.
And it was a really, really big
network that
we were dealing with.
At that point in my career,
this was the biggest
thing I'd seen.
One of our control deliveries
was in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
We arrived in Tulsa,
late at night.
It was pitch black
in this neighborhood,
and there was an open house
party at the residence
where we're delivering this
marijuana laden truck.
We parked the vehicle with
marijuana in the front yard,
as we were instructed to do,
and several minutes later,
our law enforcement team
converged on the property.
We booted the front door in.
We encountered several people
in the house.
Myself and another agent, as we
were walking down the hallway,
entered the first
bedroom on the left.
When we entered that bedroom,
we encountered two people,
they were having sex.
We were able to
get them secured and verify
they didn't have
any weapons on them,
which was pretty easy to do.
And then we continued to secure
people throughout the house,
until we had
10 or 12 people secured,
and we were running out
of handcuffs.
Raul: So during some of these
controlled deliveries,
we know that
David Giesbrecht Fehr
wanted to be in contact
with the driver.
So we had the cooperator,
which was the driver
that was hired in Mexico,
he's now willing to record
some of these phone calls
with David Giesbrecht Fehr,
you know, and there were
phone calls like,
"Hey, where you at?
I need you to stop here.
I need you to go get a phone.
I need you to get a hotel.
Once you get a hotel,
I need you tell me
what hotel it is.
Send me the address.
Send me what room number.
Give me the phone
number of the room"
Just different things
that he wanted to know,
which to me was, he wanted to
know where his product was.
HSI Agent: David Giesbrecht Fehr
just had a unique voice.
It was, once he heard it
the first time,
you knew it was him, every
other the time you heard him.
(speaking Spanish)
David G. Fehr: I was
five years old when they
took me to Spanish school.
I learned first German
and then Spanish.
I was in a primaria
and secondaria,
we started learning English.
But my English, um, got better
on the street, I guess.
On my jobs.
And after that, at jail.
HSI Agent: David Giesbrecht Fehr
was well-spoken.
He sounded educated,
he sounded controlled.
Relatively pleasant to talk to,
but he just had that monotone,
that there was
no doubting his voice,
when you heard him
on the other end of the line.
Do you want to hear some
of these recordings?
David G. Fehr:
Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead.
Fehr: Okay, do me a favour,
rent a hotel.
And he'll be staying with you.
Driver: What should I rent?
Fehr: Rent a hotel
and he'll arrive
in the evening
and stay with you.
In the afternoon
he'll be with you and
for you to leave
in the early morning.
David G. Fehr: Okay, now I know
why you asking so much.
Okay, that's not my voice.
That's the same voice that my
lawyer had. That's a makeup!
And I never had to do
nothing with those drivers.
It's not my voice. It's not me.
So you did not place the
newspaper advertisements?
David G. Fehr:
No! No. It's not me.
No.
Raul: So he could say that
he was Mario Blanco,
ingeniero Silva, engineer,
whoever he was.
But at the end of the day,
when I listen to some of these
recorded phone calls that we
have with the cooperators,
I know it's
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
On one occasion, we're trying to
conduct a controlled delivery,
and we have the
cooperator office here
in Presidio, Texas, which was
we were on a phone call with
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
Fehr knew that the gig was up.
You know, he knew that
his load was intercepted
at the port of entry.
He started, you know,
talking with agents.
And I basically told him,
"David, I know that's you.
I know who you are.
You know, we've got you this.
We need you to come in.
We know who you are."
And he kept on denying.
"Well, I don't know
who you're talking about,
you know,
I don't know that name.
And what's that name
that you're telling me?
And who is that?"
(speaking Spanish)
Agent: US Customs.
(speaking Spanish)
Raul: But later on,
he ended up calling us back.
You know, he starts
pleading with us that
the driver didn't know
anything about it.
You know, he's got small kids.
You know, I don't want his kids
to go through what my son did,
or my son went through,
you know,
my son was murdered
by these individuals.
(speaking Spanish)
Raul: He was telling us
that his son was murdered.
(speaking Spanish)
David G. Fehr:
I remember that phone call.
I've seen falling
too many people,
I have seen how,
I told you,
Mennonites got killed
just to, because they're
starting doing, um,
jobs for cartels.
And
the most important thing is,
this is not, that's not
Mennonite problem,
the cartels.
That's Mexican problems.
The Mexican abuse
from Mennonites.
♪
Oscar Hagelsieb: I think that
they kind of looked at it like,
oh, poor Mennonites are getting
corrupted by the cartels,
where, all this time,
the Mennonites were
corrupting themselves.
Is it safe for you to be doing
this interview?
David G. Fehr:
I feel safe. Shouldn't I?
Have I say something,
what I shouldn't?
I don't think.
Raul: On one of the
control deliveries,
we ended up in Lumberton,
South Carolina.
We were working with
the locals, of course,
and then we're working with DEA,
in order to secure an indictment
on David Giesbrecht Fehr,
for trafficking of the cocaine.
He was arrested in Mexico,
extradited into the US,
and he was sentenced
to five years.
David G. Fehr: So I plead
guilty. And then I went to,
to Georgia, to Macon Prison.
So I did four years,
five months in prison.
Before I came out of jail,
every time I talk to my wife
or to my brother,
they goes like,
"Don't come back to Mexico,
they will kill you!"
I go, "Why?!"
"Because those are cartels.
You have been doing stuff
for them. They will kill you."
So the American government
told me, "You can choose.
Do you wanna to go
Canada or Mexico?"
Because I'm Canadian-Mexican.
I wanna go Mexico.
I wanna see my kids.
I wanna be with my wife.
And that's what I did.
They sent me back to Mexico.
The first thing what I did,
I went to my cousin.
I goes like, "I need to
talk to the big head,
like from the Mennonite mob."
"What do you need?"
"I wanna talk to him."
He called him, he passed me
the phone, I go,
"Okay. Do I have problems?
Am I in dangerous?"
He goes, "No, don't worry."
Oh, um, that's it.
So I was free from
the Mennonite mob.
After that,
I went to Cuauhtémoc,
I stopped the police
and I go, I need
I need to talk to the
"big head".
And if you want to
talk to the Mafia,
you must have reason.
If not, you are in big problems.
You are in big shit.
So yeah, they took me
to the place
and I talked to the guy
and I go like,
"I'm coming from prison.
I only need to know,
if I have to run,
or am I in dangerous or-"
He goes, "No, there's
nothing wrong. You can go."
That's it. So from there on
Raul: After he got out,
he went back to Cuauhtémoc,
and from what I heard,
he was back in the business
again of smuggling narcotics.
David G. Fehr: So long
there are addicted people,
in Canada, United States,
or Europe, or wherever,
somebody will sell drugs.
Somebody will sell drugs.
HSI Agent: So Fehr,
like anybody else, had a boss.
We determined that
Enrique Harms,
was part of the David
Giesbrecht Fehr organization.
But he was even higher up
on the food chain,
than David Giesbrecht Fehr.
The investigation was a lot
bigger than we'd thought.
♪
Raul: David Giesbrecht Fehr
was telling us that
the organization
murdered his son.
And we believe that
the organization
he was talking about, was
Enrique Harms' organization.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Oscar Hagelsieb: Throughout my
career, from being an agent to
being a supervisor,
to being the Director
of organized crime
and drug enforcement,
for HSI in DC,
I always heard the name Harms.
Harms always came up
in our reports,
intelligence reports,
that were, that were
coming out from them.
And to me, I was like, man,
it took them that long!
I remember those guys
from high school.
So my knowledge, historically
about the Harms organization,
the Mennonite Mafia,
as I like to call it,
it evolved and it has evolved
throughout the years,
just like other cartels
have evolved, right?
So, at the time that the
Juarez Cartel had control
of basically all of Chihuahua
and Durango and this area,
of course, they had to fall in
with the Juarez Cartel.
There was a time when
they actually fell in
with the Salazaras, which was a
faction of the Sinaloa Cartel,
when the Sinaloa Cartel
was starting to gain ground.
But just like anything,
you know, the power shifts,
and so I think that
the Mennonite Mafia,
they're very keen
and very smart in the way,
you know, that they
align themselves because
they align themselves to
whoever is gonna have the power,
and is gonna align
their interests.
And that's the way it's been for
ever since the cartel started.
And it's not only
just the Mennonites,
it's any organization
that wants to survive.
♪
Well, the Harms drug family has
been untouchable for so long,
and it's the same old story,
corruption, bribes,
and the fact that
they've been offered this
sort of immunity for years
by the Mexican government.
I believe that Kiki Harms has
remained in power for so long,
survived this long,
I believe, because,
first of all, he's smart.
Remained just
high enough to where he controls
the Mennonite smuggling
portion of it,
but not so big,
that he gains attention
from Mexican authorities
or U.S. authorities.
And he uses the fact
that Mennonites,
by nature are very secretive.
They keep the outside world,
for the most part at bay.
And so he's able to travel
in these communities,
with some sort of protection,
because even if the Mennonites
are not involved,
or members from the Mennonite
community are not involved
in smuggling, they're gonna
offer him protection
because he is a Mennonite,
and he is seen as a leader.
That community
is very secretive.
They keep everything
in a small group.
They don't let much get out.
It's a closed community
within a closed community,
because cartels themselves
are very secretive, right?
The Mexican cartels have,
like recently started
doing stupid things
like putting stuff on
social media where you don't see
the Mennonites
doing that, right?
So Kiki Harms uses that
to his advantage.
Yeah. Just like
any cartel leader,
or any organization,
criminal organization, if-
I mean the people that need
to know that he's a boss,
know that he's a boss.
The people that are
actively involved, right?
That, that, that,
that take orders from him.
Nothing where a Mennonite
is involved as far as smuggling,
is not gonna be known by Kiki,
and authorized by Kiki.
So the illegal aspect of them,
Kiki Harms has, has control.
Johan Harms: Well,
November 6th, 1994,
well, it's a Sunday morning.
I wake up and-
And I did hear like my dad,
you know, got a phone call.
And and he left.
He left the place and,
and about 45 minutes
or an hour after,
somebody comes and,
and gives us the news,
that he
had a car accident, and
passed away.
He died in a car accident.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
David G. Fehr: I saw the
accident, I walked down
where the car was, because
it was beside a bridge,
flipped over,
and I only saw the body,
and I saw a bullet hole,
at the door, driver's door.
Like, you have seen
a bullet hole, right?
Yeah, that's what it was.
♪
Johan Harms: Me personally, I
don't believe it was an accident
because
a couple of days after,
like, we found bullet holes
in one of the
fenders of the car.
So that raises question.
Like who shot the tires?
And there are a lot of rumours
that he had a Bible,
and he was a way to church,
but definitely, he was not
on his way to church,
and he was not, he,
there was not a Bible in the,
in the car,
I want to clear that up.
That wasn't
that's not exactly
what happened.
♪
David G. Fehr: What I know
that John, the actor,
he did a lot of shit.
Do you think it's more possible
that John (Johan)
was actually the boss of the
Mennonite Mafia?
David G. Fehr: Yes.
That's what I think. Yes.
Producer: What do you think?
Fehr: I think that
he was a good one.
He was the big head.
Johan Harms: (chuckles)
David G. Fehr: Yes.
♪
Fehr: Why would he make movies?
Why would he
like to be a movie star?
Why would-, why would he
spend so much money?
Because that's,
that cost a lot of money.
I bet you that must be.
And every day a new pickup,
and all that stuff.
I, I always stood
away from them.
Director: So you think
John was actually the guy,
not Enrique?
Fehr: Yeah. Not, not Enrique.
I don't, I don't believe
Enrique's the big head.
♪
No more questions.
♪
Time out.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Who's in charge of the
Mennonites
when it comes to the business
in Cuauhtémoc today?
♪
Who's El Bolas?
Johan Harms: Mmm
I don't wanna get into that.
No, I don't wanna get into that.
♪
♪
♪
(soft dramatic music) ♪
♪
Johan Harms: Are we rolling yet?
Producer: Yes. Any time.
Johan Harms: (laughs)
My name is the Johan Harms,
and my dad name
is Abraham Harms.
And I'm here to set
the record straight.
♪
It's a famous name.
A lot of people know him,
and my brother Enrique.
To me he was like, amazing dad.
I love him.
Weekends, when he was
coming home after his trips,
he played games with us kids
at the house,
and we were all exciting.
People that know him, love him.
He wasn't this bad person
who wanted to be
in the drug business.
That wasn't him.
He was a small trafficker.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Like he was
one of the best persons
on planet Earth.
♪
He got into this
marijuana business,
but it wasn't that he wanted it.
He got into this business
because of
life took him there.
♪
He did it for us.
So can someone be a drug dealer
and be right with God?
That's the question.
♪
(soft clicking music beat) ♪
♪
(tense dramatic music) ♪
♪
♪
HSI Agent: The drug game
is never ending.
♪
Whenever you take out,
or chop off the head
of one snake,
another snake arises.
♪
Being an undercover agent
is challenging.
It's a mental game.
Thinking in the way
the criminal would think.
Trying to be cool
under pressure.
Being quiet enough
to look normal,
but asking enough questions
to covertly gather intel.
There's a fine line on
being able to execute
the mission safely,
and then really
put yourself in harm's way
and doing yourself disservice
in any investigation.
I think it's the
best gig in the world.
You get to go out and play
cops and robbers every day.
It's the same stuff you're doing
and imagining when you're a kid,
you get to live that out
in real life
and get paid for it.
Just letting border patrol know
that we're gonna be out there,
one, so they don't mess with us,
and two,
we're a long ways from help.
So, they'll be our first
call that we make
if anything pops off.
When the regular citizen
thinks of the word Mennonite,
they think of a quiet,
very religious,
proper group people
that are just
doing the right thing
and living a good life.
The simple life.
They're very into
their agricultural.
And, it's a very peaceful
group of people.
But just like every society has,
the Mennonite population,
it's a very small fraction
of people
who commit crimes,
and a lot of that crime
is drug smuggling.
The majority of the narcotics
that we seize
at the ports of entry
are, we call it
deep concealment,
to where it's concealed
inside a non-factory
compartment of a vehicle,
whether it be a gas tank,
a frame rail, an engine block
Johan Harms: You can find
different compartments
in cars, and seats,
and car seats.
Mennonites were so trusted,
like at borders,
like when you were
approaching the border,
that you were just good to go.
My dad, he told us
what he was doing
and like what was going on,
and unfortunately we accepted,
but he didn't force us.
Andrew Mitrovica:
My understanding is that Abe
enlisted the help of his sons,
particularly Enrique.
HSI Agent: Enrique Harms,
he's comparable to
El Chapo Guzmán
of the Sinaloa Cartel.
He's at the top of
the food chain.
Oscar Hagelsieb: Anybody in,
along the community,
especially in
the Valley of El Paso,
has heard of the Harms.
We knew that the Harms are
running the Mennonite Mafia.
It was kind of like this
mythical figure, right?
HSI Agent: Cuauhtémoc,
Mexico is a town
about two hours south of
the US-Mexico border,
and it is a Mennonite colony,
and home to thousands and
thousands of Mennonites.
(soft dramatic music) ♪
♪
Sam Quinones:
There's this community,
laid out in, like,
almost perfect geometry.
The roads are like
perfect straight lines.
Their collective style
of very efficient
cattle farming and
dairy farming,
and making a nationally
known cheese,
in Mexico known as
Queso Menonita.
Johan Harms: My dad, he was
in the cheese business,
way before he started
into the drug trafficking.
Back in Cuauhtémoc, back then,
there were different
cheese factories.
So he was working
with this company,
and like, he bought
cheese and like and
he went all over Mexico
to look for market.
And he was doing pretty good,
he was making a good living.
Was good money in it.
Then after some time,
he finds the American Crisco,
and they love this Crisco
in Cuauhtémoc.
If you could get
a load of Crisco,
you would be selling it
in a day or two,
and he could make good money,
double or triple the price.
That first time,
when he got the Crisco,
like he was coming
to the Mexican customs,
and show them the permit.
Like everything was good.
After the third or fourth time
when he came to customs
and showed the permit, 'No, '
they were telling him,
'this is a fake one.'
So, they just pulled
the truck aside,
and let it sit there.
And like, and it was in
middle of May somewhere, and
like in the desert by Juarez,
like it gets really warm.
And the Crisco
would start melting.
And people that were driving by,
the agents just took boxes of
Crisco, and just gave it away,
and that was my dad's savings.
(chuckles)
That was a really
tough time for him,
it was a really tough situation.
All the money that
he had been saving up,
he spent into it and then after,
like he was getting a loan,
trying to get it solved,
and, but it was just
not working.
All the years of hard working
to get somewhere and to get
something start up
and then just all of a sudden,
like, you just lose everything.
By that time, like,
life was like really tough.
He owed money
and he needed to pay
and like, was high interest,
and he couldn't,
just couldn't make it for it.
Like and then, all of a sudden,
there's this genius
comes up with this idea,
and tells him,
"Hey, you know what?"
Like, "I got some
marijuana, like-
Probably, you can get
into the business
and sell one of this stuff
and pay off your debt."
And so he did.
He didn't wanted to be
this drug dealer.
But
Being in a drug
business isn't easy.
It's, um-
It's a tough life.
You get used to it, and then,
you don't see it
as a sin anymore.
Andrew Mitrovica: Beneath the
surface, there is something
much more sinister taking place.
Like many Canadians,
I thought Mennonites were
God-fearing, law abiding,
hardworking citizens
who had the best interests
of their children at heart,
who worked an honest life,
who believed that,
faith was important.
Sam Quinones: They believed
that God rewarded
your life of hard work
with entry into Heaven,
and so prohibitions
against riding bikes,
radio, TV, rubber tires
on the tractors
You had to wear your
overalls until they stank.
You did not wash them.
Weird things like this
began to get people
excommunicated and then
they couldn't be hired.
Eventually, a culture
of flouting prohibitions,
takes root in these communities,
which has its final expression,
I would argue,
in drug trafficking,
♪
HSI Agent:
Even in the Mennonite community,
as religious as they are,
sometimes they fall down
on their luck.
And there is an
opportunity there,
in that community,
to smuggle narcotics.
Johan Harms: In the 90s,
the crop price dropped
so bad that year,
almost every farmer in
Cuauhtémoc
got into big debts.
And that's when a lot of people
walk up to you,
that were judging you
for a long time
for what you did,
and now they're
coming up to you and asking,
'What can we do?'
'How can we survive this,
this crisis?'
I don't want to be in
drug business.
I don't want to be
a drug dealer,
but I have this farmland,
and I have been doing this
all my life.
My dad did it.
My grandpa did it.
Not that they want
to be drug dealers,
but believe you and me,
people will do
things that they will not do,
like if it comes to money,
money is money and,
and people do things.
Sam Quinones: Through the '90s
and into the 2000s
the Harms sons,
Enrique Harms, Johan Harms,
begin to develop
the drug business
that their father
bequeathed them.
Johan Harms, he decides
he's going to use his money
to get into the movie business.
In Mexico, there is
a long tradition
of straight-to-video,
B-movie, narco shoot-em-ups,
(gun shots)
just about drug trafficking and,
and all that kind of stuff.
(loud guns shots)
Johan Harms
apparently decides that
this is his life's work
and his life's dream.
He puts a lot of money
into producing these movies,
and in one movie,
which I have seen,
takes the guy's head and
suffocates the guy,
by sticking his head into
a big pile of cocaine.
♪
They've gone to hell.
Fine, let's go partner.
Johan Harms:
I was living my dream.
(chuckles)
It was exciting.
I was getting famous and,
and it was super exciting,
you know, the work
that I was, was doing.
Andrew Mitrovica:
Abe was quite content
trafficking in
pretty poor-quality dope.
Enrique seized the opportunity.
And unlike his father,
I think, was more a visionary
insofar as he knew
he had to adapt.
The BC bud was flooding
into the US market.
The Mennonite product
was really seedy.
It wasn't very good quality
And like good businessmen,
they anticipated how the market
was going to change
and they adapted to the market.
So they diversified
into cocaine, heroin
Made a hell of a lot more money.
♪
Johan Harms: It's a tough life.
It's not, it's not easy.
Like, you get into
tough situations,
and you are facing
with tough people,
and you gotta stand up
for yourself.
Not that you want to be this
main person, but sometimes,
like, you really have to
stand up for yourself,
and like that's in,
in every single business.
Like it's all over, like you
gotta defend your business.
You gotta defend yourself
because like,
if you're not going to be
standing up for yourself,
the people, they will
eat you alive.
Like, that's not that
you want to be this bad person,
but sometimes, like,
you gotta face,
face whatever
presents to you, right?
Like, if you really
got a tough situation,
okay, I would bring a gun along,
but not-(chuckles)
that wasn't the normal me right?
Oscar Hagelsieb:
I grew up around Socorro,
late '80s, early '90s.
The thing about Socorro
at that time when
one of the main highways that
the cartels used to use
to smuggle their drugs
into the United States
went directly
through that main street
in Socorro.
So at the time that I was
growing up in that area,
Socorro was one of the major
thoroughfares for,
for the cocaine and marijuana
that was coming in from the
Juarez cartel.
So in that little town,
everybody knew who was involved.
You were involved or you knew
people that were involved.
It was just common knowledge.
The ironic thing about
the Mennonites is that
we always heard
of the Mennonites
being this religious
holy faction,
that they would turn away
from modern luxuries
like electricity, and they,
all they wanted to do was,
you know, live by the Bible.
But all we knew growing up
is when the Mennonites
were in town,
when they would come in
for the weekends,
they were the hardiest partiers!
(drunken shouting)
That was ironic because,
when we would hear that,
you know, about the Mennonites,
you know, being so religious,
we're like, 'Well, not the ones
that we hang out with 'cause
those guys come hard,
and they party,
downing their bottles
of Jack Daniels
and partaking in any party drug
that they can
get their hands on.'
♪
Sam Quinones: In 2003,
I was working on a book
about Mexican immigration.
I get to know a local
social worker, and one night
he begins to tell me
about the Mennonite community,
about how the community
is really
completely in advanced decay.
First, he says, there's a
terrible problem
with inbreeding.
And I go, "what are you-
the Mennonites from Mexico
you're talking about now?"
I- it just didn't
jive with what I knew
about these people, right?
And, you know, the other thing
is, and we're driving along,
the other thing is they're
major drug traffickers.
I say, "Whoa, you know, pull up-
What are you-Pull over!
I gotta hear this!"
You know, he goes on to say,
"I have a client, a woman
whose husband was
a huge informant
for the Bureau of Narcotics
of Oklahoma,
as they put together
the largest drug bust
in the history of the State,
up to that point,
in 1999.
I don't know if
you've heard of a guy
by the name of Enrique Harms."
And I had, like, never heard
of that guy before.
And like, "Yeah,
he's kind of the capo.
His dad was the first one."
This is the most bizarre story
I've ever heard,
as a journalist, man,
and I consider myself
to have a highly refined
journalistic compass radar
right in here somewhere,
and it was going haywire.
It was like,
'get down there, go start-
someone's gonna do the
narco Mennonite story
before you do. (laughs)
So I went down to Cuauhtémoc,
to the Mennonite campos,
as they're called.
I go down there and
the first thing that happens,
is I realize that
I need to rent a car.
So I go into the Budget
rent-a-car, and I say,
"What's the cheapest car
you've got?"
And they point to, (laughs)
they point to a gold Chevy Love,
which is about as large
as your kitchen table,
okay, it's really dinky.
I'm like, "O-kay,
I guess I'll rent that."
And I'm driving off the lot, and
of course, this is a rural area,
there's trucks and
pickup trucks. That's it.
No one's got a Chevy Love.
And you know, I got down there
and you could see
the remarkable development
that was due to the
very industrious,
hard-working
Mennonite community.
The farms were perfect.
No trash, no litter,
very perfect roads.
Right? They just go straight.
It's the middle of the desert
and talk about making
the desert bloom.
That's exactly what Mennonites
had done by then.
Here I found this entire
community, that it was planted
in the middle of the old world
that they imposed on themselves,
but unable to avoid
the new world,
that was all around them.
The old world, I began to see,
was definitely damaging,
harmful to them,
because they use this
old form of,
of educating their kids,
which was almost useless.
So I went to a
one-room schoolhouse,
I mean, you'd think this would
be more at home in like
1870 in Nebraska or
something like that?
You know, where you have
one teacher,
and you have kids of all ages
sitting there,
writing out in chalk,
on these little black
chalkboard slates, Scripture.
The teacher was a farmer.
He didn't know anything.
He asked me, literally,
this guy asked me,
"6 times 7, that's 42, right?"
'Yeah. Yeah,
that's 42 all right.'
You know, but this was
the level of knowledge
that these teachers had.
There's almost none.
And so these kids graduated
from this one-room schoolhouse,
and that's all the education
they ever got. Right?
And so they were vulnerable.
They could not really get jobs.
♪
Anyway, for the next
several days,
I drive around the
Mennonite colonies
and talk to people.
I was asking questions
about trafficking,
and I saw it was going to be
a difficult story to write,
because of the fact that
I really didn't know much
about this community and
I didn't speak the language,
and I was clearly an outsider.
I talked to this one guy
and he said,
'There is a guy who owns
a restaurant out on
the main highway, and,
and his name is Enrique Harms.
I go, "Enrique Harms, okay.
That's the same name as
the Mennonite couple."
And so I go to the
restaurant La Huerta,
and I meet Enrique Harms,
the owner of the restaurant.
Thin little guy,
face like a ferret,
and he begins to tell me about
how he had a cocaine habit,
and but now he's doing better.
And now he's got
this restaurant.
I stayed there a week.
I go by that Huerta restaurant
one more time,
I'm eating there,
reading my notes, doing-
and all of a sudden Enrique
Harms sits down in front of me.
He goes, "What are you
still doing here?"
Now, this does not feel
very welcoming.
You know, I'm like,
"I'm here, I'm leaving actually.
I'm about to head-
got a plane later today."
"Oh, okay."
So I finish up,
I pay the bill, I walk outside,
and all of a sudden,
he appears next to me.
"Hey, let me take your picture."
And at that point,
I start getting, like,
a little defensive.
"Hey, screw you, man.
You're not taking my picture!"
I get in my car, and I head off
down the very, very long highway
into Cuauhtémoc.
And as I'm driving,
I look in my rearview mirror
and I realize
I am being followed.
♪
I look and there's this
purple Dodge Stratus,
smoked windows, no plates.
And that's when I really began
to get terrified, honestly.
Nobody really knows I'm here
except my girlfriend
up in Chicago.
So I realize I just gotta make
a run for it, you know?
And so I hit the road
out of town.
I come to a stoplight,
and I see a big,
forest green,
Chevy pickup coming.
And this guy pulls up
in his pickup truck.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
And he reaches down
into the well of his car.
And I think right there,
I believe,
he's gonna pull out
a pistol and shoot me.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Up to this point,
I had been gripped
by the most razor sharp,
crystalline terror,
I have ever felt.
I am in real,
serious trouble now.
♪
And he reaches down into
the well of the truck,
and I really thought
he was gonna come out
with a gun and just
kill me right there.
Instead he comes out with a
digital camera,
and he holds it up like this,
and he starts taking my picture.
Chi-ching, chi-ching, chi-ching,
I'm like
The light changes,
all the cars go,
and I just squeal out of there
and I drive into the
first business I can find.
And I get out of my car and it's
2 o'clock lunchtime in Mexico.
Nobody's there but this kid.
20 year-old kid, who's kind of
minding the store,
and I go up to him and I'm like,
"The narcos-
The narco Mennonites are
after me, man. Call the cops!"
This kid all alone,
he begins to hyperventilate.
He begins to try to push me.
"Leave. Get out, get out!
We don't want you here!"
You know? I tell him,
"Look, man, I'm not moving
till you call the cops.
Get somebody over here."
Finally he gets the picture.
He calls the cops.
The cops come about ten minutes
later. It seemed endless.
It seemed like they would
never arrive.
And finally they get there,
and they take me up
to the police department.
And so
a plan is devised
for two of the cops
to take me to
Chihuahua City Airport.
One guy is driving me
and the other guy is driving
my gold Chevy Love, right?
The guy driving me,
lays his AK-47 on my lap
as he drives, and we take off.
It's supposed to take
hour and plus,
to get to the airport.
I think we did it in 45 minutes.
We were blazing, blazing fast.
We get to the airport,
I get onto the plane,
I am like almost bent down
and kissed the plane,
you know, as I got on to it.
That was my
bizarre experience with
the narco Mennonites of Mexico.
♪
(low tense dramatic music) ♪
♪
Raul: In 2012, we started seeing
a lot more of the marijuana
being smuggled through the
Presidio, Texas port of entry.
We would see utility trailers
are being loaded with marijuana
in the frame rails,
utility gas tanks,
like those big diesel tanks
that are in the back.
They would put
a tank within a tank,
in the regular gas tank
of pickups,
and they would put a steel box
full of contraband.
HSI Agent: Mennonites are
welders by trade.
They are really, really good
at welding farm equipment,
and they're really,
really good at welding
non-factory compartments.
And inside those
non-factory compartments,
is where they hide their drugs.
Raul: So during
the interviews of these
drivers of these vehicles,
they would always come up with,
you know, we answered
an ad in the paper.
HSI Agent: There were
individuals from Mexico,
that were looking for work.
And part of their way
to look for work is they
were looking for different ads
in the newspapers.
Many of them encountered
the same ad,
someone requesting drivers,
who had tourist Visas to
enter the United States.
And they were requesting
those drivers
either deliver products,
legal products,
in the United States,
or pick up some farm equipment
in the U.S.
and transport that equipment
back to Mexico.
Unbeknownst to them,
those drivers
were given a company car.
But that company car
had narcotics in it.
And so they began smuggling
drugs into the United States,
and they didn't even know
what they were doing.
So, were these drivers
Mennonites?
Raul: No, these, most of these
drivers were
Mexican citizens from
Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico.
And in Chihuahua,
they do see a lot of Mennonites
because Cuauhtémoc, Anahuac
isn't too far from there.
A lot of the drivers
that we were encountering,
were describing the person
that hired 'em
and put the ads in the paper as
Mennonites, or 'Mennonas.'
We named this operation
Three Blind Mules.
A mule is a person
that smuggles contraband
for a criminal organization.
HSI Agent: So part of our
investigation was
to try to figure out
who was putting these ads
in the Mexican newspaper.
We started asking,
"Hey, who did you call?"
"What was the phone number
you were given?"
"What were the instructions
you were given?"
"Do you remember what
the guy looked like
that delivered you
this vehicle?"
That happened over
a course of several months,
to where we, now we started to
get a few nicknames.
Raul: Some were Kwon Wiebe,
Mario Blanco was a,
was a good one.
Oscar Silva was another one.
There was just
a lot of different ones.
You know, we started
hearing a lot of
Engineer.
You know, the 'ingeniero Silva',
or 'ingeniero' or 'inge'.
HSI Agent: There were several
drivers that stated
that the engineers
are the one that hire me.
And, that's all we had to go by
at the very beginning.
Once we started to realize that,
hey, this is one person
that was responsible for this,
we started trying to get
as many identifiers,
physical characteristics
of what that person looked like,
and to start to narrow down
a target profile of
who we believed was responsible
for these newspaper ads.
He was described as a
tall, white man,
a Mennonite man,
that spoke Spanish
and spoke German.
Raul: That person was identified
as David Giesbrecht Fehr.
HSI Agent: So once we identified
David Giesbrecht Fehr
as our main target, we ran
a target profile on him
and tried to find every
bit of information
we could on his past.
David Giesbrecht Fehr had a
history of narcotics smuggling.
We found out that
he himself used to be a mule.
He was arrested
in Presidio, Texas,
for bringing drugs across
the US-Mexico border.
He went to prison,
and then he was
later deported back to Mexico.
We felt like he hadn't
learned his lesson
from when he was caught
the first time,
and, he was back
in his old ways.
This time a little bit smarter,
a little bit wiser.
And so instead of now of,
of being that mule
and taking all the risk,
he was assuming
very little of the risk,
and just drawing up
the blueprint in Mexico.
He was the one that was,
you know, had the master plan.
And, and that plan
was working for a long time.
David Giesbrecht Fehr's
operation
was a well-oiled machine,
until it wasn't.
Producer: Working?
Clapboard: (clap)
David G. Fehr: My name is
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
♪
I'm doing this, just because
I need to clean my name.
I grew up in a Mennonite family.
My dad is born in Mexico.
My grandpa's in Canada.
We were nine in the family.
I was the, the seventh.
It was Peter,
Hanz, Maria, Willie,
Henry, Justina, me,
and then Margaret
and then Danny - nine.
Um, Hanz or John, he got-
he died on the '86
when I was 13 years old,
drinking and driving.
He was my best brother.
♪
Yeah. Things happens in my life,
and I got, I had a really hard
time for that.
♪
My dad was kicked out
before I born,
he was kicked out
from the Mennonites,
because he started
driving truck.
He started dealing with Mexican
people and use electricity.
♪
I never in my life
have used overalls,
and never in my life
had a Mennonite school.
I never had a
Mennonite girlfriend,
never a Mennonite wife.
I grew up with Mexican people.
Mennonites, they are like-
to David Giesbrecht Fehr,
you're drug dealer, you're
murderer or something like that,
they go away from me, something.
That's why I'm here. I'm not a
drug dealer. I'm not a killer.
I'm not a murderer. I'm-
I'm legal person.
That's why I'm coming
for this. Yes.
HSI Agent: The next phase
of the investigation,
we tried to figure out
how do we defeat this?
How do we get ahead of this?
Because right now, there is
an unlimited amount
of people in Mexico,
they're gonna answer
these newspaper ads.
And if we don't put
a squash to this,
we are going to be
inundated with it.
The only option that we had
was to start delivering
those narcotics
from the border to their
destination in United States,
and we needed the blind mules'
help to make that happen.
Raul: So some of the
next steps that we did,
we started talking
with some of the drivers.
You know, after they tell us
they don't know anything
about this, they didn't know
anything, that any drugs,
or contraband was in
the vehicles.
And, you know, some of them
were like,
'No, you're lying to us.'
You know, we had to go
and show 'em.
HSI Agent: In interviewing
these blind mules,
we would inform them
that the vehicle they had,
they were driving,
had narcotics in it.
Obviously, it was news to them.
They were shocked.
Most of them were
really, really upset.
And they wanted to do
whatever it took
to get back at
David Giesbrecht Fehr,
for putting them
in that position.
And they agreed to cooperate
with the investigation.
David G. Fehr: Supposedly they
caught the driver,
and this driver goes like,
'Yes, it is him'
But, it's not me.
The drivers usually when
they caught them, just go home,
and just be free
to show somebody, like-
and that's what they tried
to do with me.
I- they want me to show
somebody like,
to put, to put somebody in.
Who do you want me to put in?
Raul: And then
they got mad, you know,
and they said, "Hey, you know,
where're you supposed to go?"
"Well, I'm supposed
to go to Albuquerque
or I'm supposed to go to
Tulsa, Oklahoma"
And I said, "All right,
well, are you willing
to help the US government?"
And, of course, you know,
some of them were all for it.
And we did quite a few of these
controlled deliveries,
to different cities in the US.
We're going to take it
to its final destination,
in order to apprehend
more individuals,
higher in the cartel.
HSI Agent: We're driving these
drug-laden vehicles
all across the country.
We were all over the map.
And it was a really, really big
network that
we were dealing with.
At that point in my career,
this was the biggest
thing I'd seen.
One of our control deliveries
was in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
We arrived in Tulsa,
late at night.
It was pitch black
in this neighborhood,
and there was an open house
party at the residence
where we're delivering this
marijuana laden truck.
We parked the vehicle with
marijuana in the front yard,
as we were instructed to do,
and several minutes later,
our law enforcement team
converged on the property.
We booted the front door in.
We encountered several people
in the house.
Myself and another agent, as we
were walking down the hallway,
entered the first
bedroom on the left.
When we entered that bedroom,
we encountered two people,
they were having sex.
We were able to
get them secured and verify
they didn't have
any weapons on them,
which was pretty easy to do.
And then we continued to secure
people throughout the house,
until we had
10 or 12 people secured,
and we were running out
of handcuffs.
Raul: So during some of these
controlled deliveries,
we know that
David Giesbrecht Fehr
wanted to be in contact
with the driver.
So we had the cooperator,
which was the driver
that was hired in Mexico,
he's now willing to record
some of these phone calls
with David Giesbrecht Fehr,
you know, and there were
phone calls like,
"Hey, where you at?
I need you to stop here.
I need you to go get a phone.
I need you to get a hotel.
Once you get a hotel,
I need you tell me
what hotel it is.
Send me the address.
Send me what room number.
Give me the phone
number of the room"
Just different things
that he wanted to know,
which to me was, he wanted to
know where his product was.
HSI Agent: David Giesbrecht Fehr
just had a unique voice.
It was, once he heard it
the first time,
you knew it was him, every
other the time you heard him.
(speaking Spanish)
David G. Fehr: I was
five years old when they
took me to Spanish school.
I learned first German
and then Spanish.
I was in a primaria
and secondaria,
we started learning English.
But my English, um, got better
on the street, I guess.
On my jobs.
And after that, at jail.
HSI Agent: David Giesbrecht Fehr
was well-spoken.
He sounded educated,
he sounded controlled.
Relatively pleasant to talk to,
but he just had that monotone,
that there was
no doubting his voice,
when you heard him
on the other end of the line.
Do you want to hear some
of these recordings?
David G. Fehr:
Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead.
Fehr: Okay, do me a favour,
rent a hotel.
And he'll be staying with you.
Driver: What should I rent?
Fehr: Rent a hotel
and he'll arrive
in the evening
and stay with you.
In the afternoon
he'll be with you and
for you to leave
in the early morning.
David G. Fehr: Okay, now I know
why you asking so much.
Okay, that's not my voice.
That's the same voice that my
lawyer had. That's a makeup!
And I never had to do
nothing with those drivers.
It's not my voice. It's not me.
So you did not place the
newspaper advertisements?
David G. Fehr:
No! No. It's not me.
No.
Raul: So he could say that
he was Mario Blanco,
ingeniero Silva, engineer,
whoever he was.
But at the end of the day,
when I listen to some of these
recorded phone calls that we
have with the cooperators,
I know it's
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
On one occasion, we're trying to
conduct a controlled delivery,
and we have the
cooperator office here
in Presidio, Texas, which was
we were on a phone call with
David Giesbrecht Fehr.
Fehr knew that the gig was up.
You know, he knew that
his load was intercepted
at the port of entry.
He started, you know,
talking with agents.
And I basically told him,
"David, I know that's you.
I know who you are.
You know, we've got you this.
We need you to come in.
We know who you are."
And he kept on denying.
"Well, I don't know
who you're talking about,
you know,
I don't know that name.
And what's that name
that you're telling me?
And who is that?"
(speaking Spanish)
Agent: US Customs.
(speaking Spanish)
Raul: But later on,
he ended up calling us back.
You know, he starts
pleading with us that
the driver didn't know
anything about it.
You know, he's got small kids.
You know, I don't want his kids
to go through what my son did,
or my son went through,
you know,
my son was murdered
by these individuals.
(speaking Spanish)
Raul: He was telling us
that his son was murdered.
(speaking Spanish)
David G. Fehr:
I remember that phone call.
I've seen falling
too many people,
I have seen how,
I told you,
Mennonites got killed
just to, because they're
starting doing, um,
jobs for cartels.
And
the most important thing is,
this is not, that's not
Mennonite problem,
the cartels.
That's Mexican problems.
The Mexican abuse
from Mennonites.
♪
Oscar Hagelsieb: I think that
they kind of looked at it like,
oh, poor Mennonites are getting
corrupted by the cartels,
where, all this time,
the Mennonites were
corrupting themselves.
Is it safe for you to be doing
this interview?
David G. Fehr:
I feel safe. Shouldn't I?
Have I say something,
what I shouldn't?
I don't think.
Raul: On one of the
control deliveries,
we ended up in Lumberton,
South Carolina.
We were working with
the locals, of course,
and then we're working with DEA,
in order to secure an indictment
on David Giesbrecht Fehr,
for trafficking of the cocaine.
He was arrested in Mexico,
extradited into the US,
and he was sentenced
to five years.
David G. Fehr: So I plead
guilty. And then I went to,
to Georgia, to Macon Prison.
So I did four years,
five months in prison.
Before I came out of jail,
every time I talk to my wife
or to my brother,
they goes like,
"Don't come back to Mexico,
they will kill you!"
I go, "Why?!"
"Because those are cartels.
You have been doing stuff
for them. They will kill you."
So the American government
told me, "You can choose.
Do you wanna to go
Canada or Mexico?"
Because I'm Canadian-Mexican.
I wanna go Mexico.
I wanna see my kids.
I wanna be with my wife.
And that's what I did.
They sent me back to Mexico.
The first thing what I did,
I went to my cousin.
I goes like, "I need to
talk to the big head,
like from the Mennonite mob."
"What do you need?"
"I wanna talk to him."
He called him, he passed me
the phone, I go,
"Okay. Do I have problems?
Am I in dangerous?"
He goes, "No, don't worry."
Oh, um, that's it.
So I was free from
the Mennonite mob.
After that,
I went to Cuauhtémoc,
I stopped the police
and I go, I need
I need to talk to the
"big head".
And if you want to
talk to the Mafia,
you must have reason.
If not, you are in big problems.
You are in big shit.
So yeah, they took me
to the place
and I talked to the guy
and I go like,
"I'm coming from prison.
I only need to know,
if I have to run,
or am I in dangerous or-"
He goes, "No, there's
nothing wrong. You can go."
That's it. So from there on
Raul: After he got out,
he went back to Cuauhtémoc,
and from what I heard,
he was back in the business
again of smuggling narcotics.
David G. Fehr: So long
there are addicted people,
in Canada, United States,
or Europe, or wherever,
somebody will sell drugs.
Somebody will sell drugs.
HSI Agent: So Fehr,
like anybody else, had a boss.
We determined that
Enrique Harms,
was part of the David
Giesbrecht Fehr organization.
But he was even higher up
on the food chain,
than David Giesbrecht Fehr.
The investigation was a lot
bigger than we'd thought.
♪
Raul: David Giesbrecht Fehr
was telling us that
the organization
murdered his son.
And we believe that
the organization
he was talking about, was
Enrique Harms' organization.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Oscar Hagelsieb: Throughout my
career, from being an agent to
being a supervisor,
to being the Director
of organized crime
and drug enforcement,
for HSI in DC,
I always heard the name Harms.
Harms always came up
in our reports,
intelligence reports,
that were, that were
coming out from them.
And to me, I was like, man,
it took them that long!
I remember those guys
from high school.
So my knowledge, historically
about the Harms organization,
the Mennonite Mafia,
as I like to call it,
it evolved and it has evolved
throughout the years,
just like other cartels
have evolved, right?
So, at the time that the
Juarez Cartel had control
of basically all of Chihuahua
and Durango and this area,
of course, they had to fall in
with the Juarez Cartel.
There was a time when
they actually fell in
with the Salazaras, which was a
faction of the Sinaloa Cartel,
when the Sinaloa Cartel
was starting to gain ground.
But just like anything,
you know, the power shifts,
and so I think that
the Mennonite Mafia,
they're very keen
and very smart in the way,
you know, that they
align themselves because
they align themselves to
whoever is gonna have the power,
and is gonna align
their interests.
And that's the way it's been for
ever since the cartel started.
And it's not only
just the Mennonites,
it's any organization
that wants to survive.
♪
Well, the Harms drug family has
been untouchable for so long,
and it's the same old story,
corruption, bribes,
and the fact that
they've been offered this
sort of immunity for years
by the Mexican government.
I believe that Kiki Harms has
remained in power for so long,
survived this long,
I believe, because,
first of all, he's smart.
Remained just
high enough to where he controls
the Mennonite smuggling
portion of it,
but not so big,
that he gains attention
from Mexican authorities
or U.S. authorities.
And he uses the fact
that Mennonites,
by nature are very secretive.
They keep the outside world,
for the most part at bay.
And so he's able to travel
in these communities,
with some sort of protection,
because even if the Mennonites
are not involved,
or members from the Mennonite
community are not involved
in smuggling, they're gonna
offer him protection
because he is a Mennonite,
and he is seen as a leader.
That community
is very secretive.
They keep everything
in a small group.
They don't let much get out.
It's a closed community
within a closed community,
because cartels themselves
are very secretive, right?
The Mexican cartels have,
like recently started
doing stupid things
like putting stuff on
social media where you don't see
the Mennonites
doing that, right?
So Kiki Harms uses that
to his advantage.
Yeah. Just like
any cartel leader,
or any organization,
criminal organization, if-
I mean the people that need
to know that he's a boss,
know that he's a boss.
The people that are
actively involved, right?
That, that, that,
that take orders from him.
Nothing where a Mennonite
is involved as far as smuggling,
is not gonna be known by Kiki,
and authorized by Kiki.
So the illegal aspect of them,
Kiki Harms has, has control.
Johan Harms: Well,
November 6th, 1994,
well, it's a Sunday morning.
I wake up and-
And I did hear like my dad,
you know, got a phone call.
And and he left.
He left the place and,
and about 45 minutes
or an hour after,
somebody comes and,
and gives us the news,
that he
had a car accident, and
passed away.
He died in a car accident.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
David G. Fehr: I saw the
accident, I walked down
where the car was, because
it was beside a bridge,
flipped over,
and I only saw the body,
and I saw a bullet hole,
at the door, driver's door.
Like, you have seen
a bullet hole, right?
Yeah, that's what it was.
♪
Johan Harms: Me personally, I
don't believe it was an accident
because
a couple of days after,
like, we found bullet holes
in one of the
fenders of the car.
So that raises question.
Like who shot the tires?
And there are a lot of rumours
that he had a Bible,
and he was a way to church,
but definitely, he was not
on his way to church,
and he was not, he,
there was not a Bible in the,
in the car,
I want to clear that up.
That wasn't
that's not exactly
what happened.
♪
David G. Fehr: What I know
that John, the actor,
he did a lot of shit.
Do you think it's more possible
that John (Johan)
was actually the boss of the
Mennonite Mafia?
David G. Fehr: Yes.
That's what I think. Yes.
Producer: What do you think?
Fehr: I think that
he was a good one.
He was the big head.
Johan Harms: (chuckles)
David G. Fehr: Yes.
♪
Fehr: Why would he make movies?
Why would he
like to be a movie star?
Why would-, why would he
spend so much money?
Because that's,
that cost a lot of money.
I bet you that must be.
And every day a new pickup,
and all that stuff.
I, I always stood
away from them.
Director: So you think
John was actually the guy,
not Enrique?
Fehr: Yeah. Not, not Enrique.
I don't, I don't believe
Enrique's the big head.
♪
No more questions.
♪
Time out.
(tense dramatic music) ♪
Who's in charge of the
Mennonites
when it comes to the business
in Cuauhtémoc today?
♪
Who's El Bolas?
Johan Harms: Mmm
I don't wanna get into that.
No, I don't wanna get into that.
♪
♪