Everglades City, a tiny fishing village 80 miles west of Miami, has always been outlaw country. The majority of the town's 500 residents are from five families, with almost everyone related in some way. The region's coastline is comprised of a vast labyrinth of mangroves known as the Ten Thousand Islands. The unique geography, coupled with the fact that only locals knew how to navigate it, made the town a picture-perfect location for smuggling. And folks in Everglades City smuggled their way through history. In the early 1900's, they smuggled endangered animals. During the prohibition era, they took to rum running. And when drugs flooded South Florida in the 70's and 80's and the National Park Service began to phase out commercial fishing, the mainstay of the Everglades City economy, folks took to marijuana smuggling.

The DEA decided they had to put a stop to the smuggling. They executed two large, highly publicized raids in 1983 and 1984, leading to the arrest of nearly 80% of the adult male population of Everglades City.