"I guess that day God wanted me to get in trouble," he said.

The day was December 18, 2009. Quijas went to Ciudad Juarez for the first time in a long time. Like many Pasoans, he dreaded the border. That year the death toll in Juarez reached an all-time high: eight murders a day. The Juarez-El Paso border, one of the oldest and most important drug corridors in the Americas, has never been immune to crime. But violence peaked in Juarez since 2007, when former Mexican president Felipe Calderon launched a large-scale attack against drug traffickers in the area. Within a few years, Juarez earned the title of the most dangerous city in the world, followed by Baghdad.

Unfortunately for Quijas, Juarez was also the hometown of his grandmother, who was dying of throat cancer. The fear of not saying goodbye to her finally convinced him to take the risk. Luckily for him, his then-22-year-old friend and employer, Shohn Huckabee, was planning a trip across the border to get a cheap repair for his pickup truck. Quijas joined in.

The trip went as planned. Around 5:20 pm, Huckabee picked him up a few miles from the Americas-Cordoba Bridge, their route back to El Paso. This is what Quijas and Huckabee said happened next: As Huckabee merged into the long car line heading to the border checkpoint, a group of soldiers surrounded them. They dragged them out of the truck, pulled their sweaters over their heads, and pushed them inside a military van. The soldiers drove the van away from the border and into Mexico. Quijas' sweater had slipped down and he was able to see Huckabee next to him, still and quiet. "I was amazed at how calmed he was," Quijas recalls. "I whispered to him, 'They're probably going to kill us, we might not make it.'" He replied with a weak "OK."

Huckabee declined to speak on the record, but he confirmed all of Quijas' statements regarding their relationship and their experience in Juarez. His father, Kevin Huckabee, wrote in an email: "Shohn has moved on and spends no time worrying about events he can't change."

The night of the arrest, the military authorities in Ciudad Juarez called a press conference. Quijas and Huckabee were escorted to an auditorium, handcuffed and blindfolded. Quijas could sense camera flashes flickering around him. When the soldiers took the blindfold off, he saw dozens of small packets wrapped in brown tape and plastic lined up in front of him. Minutes later, an official told reporters that soldiers had arrested Quijas and Huckabee after finding 99 packets of marijuana inside their vehicle, 52 kilograms in total, valued at $100,000.

The story ran in several local and national newspapers the next morning. One of the headlines read: "Americans arrested in Juarez for smuggling."

Two days after their arrest, Quijas and Huckabee spent their first night in the Ciudad Juarez municipal prison. As might be expected, the most dangerous city in Mexico also hosted one of its most dangerous and overcrowded prisons. Quijas saw cells with up to 12 inmates crammed inside. He paid a prison guard $100 to put him and Huckabee in a less crowded cell. They were placed with two other men. One had been charged with kidnapping, the other for murder. They told Quijas they had seen his arrest on Channel 44, Juarez's local news channel, dubbed the "tragedy network" by the locals.