Smuggler

Drugs, Gangs, and Refugees at America's Northern Border

Published by Prometheus
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY INKSTICK MEDIA

When an ordinary man is thrust into the dangerous world of smuggling at America’s northern border, he is forced to risk his own freedom to protect refugees from violent immigration policing.

Soon after conservative businessman Bob Boulé opens the Smuggler’s Inn, a quirky bed and breakfast in Blaine, Washington directly on the US-Canada border, refugees, drug traffickers, and ICE agents all trust him with their secrets. The refugees tell Bob heartbreaking stories of persecution and death. The drug traffickers and ICE agents try to recruit Bob to their side in the dangerous game of smuggling at the border. As Bob’s work at the Smuggler’s Inn spirals, he is forced to make a series of risky decisions that draw him deeper and deeper into the murky border underworld, putting his own freedom at risk. His secret life comes crashing down after a violent confrontation with a Border Patrol agent in his driveway, leading him to question his core beliefs about right and wrong as he finds his true purpose in life. In this gripping exposé, Border expert Reece Jones and immigration lawyer Greg Boos reveal the hidden world of America’s northern border and provide readers with urgent insights into immigration and border policing throughout the United States.

From the Taliban-controlled countryside of Afghanistan to the infamous La Joya prison in Panama, the stories featured in Smuggler converge in the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest in the borderlands between Seattle and Vancouver. There are car chases, drug deals between the Hells Angels and the Sinaloa cartel, and over a thousand people who slip quietly across the border to safety in Canada in the dead of night. After the violent confrontation with the Border Patrol agent, Bob’s complaint goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose landmark decision in Egbert v. Boule paves the way for the apparent impunity of ICE agents on American streets in the second presidency of Donald Trump.

Featuring personal interviews, in-depth research, and a propulsive narrative, Smuggler is the untold true story of how a quaint bed and breakfast on the northern border became the epicenter of debates about refugee protections and violent immigration policing inside the United States.

About The Authors

Product Details

  • Publisher: Prometheus (October 20, 2026)
  • Length: 304 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781493092109

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Raves and Reviews

"In Smuggler, Reece Jones and Greg Boos have crafted something rare: a page-turner of car chases, gang deals and Supreme Court battles that is also, at its heart, a penetrating, empathetic meditation on conscience, complicity, and how hard it is to do the right thing when the law and your humanity push in opposite directions. Timely, stranger-than-fiction, and impossible to put down – truly a book for our dizzying moment." 

– Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning The End of the Myth and America, América

Smuggler is a gripping crime thriller that compels readers to keep turning the pages. But it tells a much bigger story about how the United States has morphed from a country that once opened its arms to those fleeing persecution and violence into one that now targets them, and those like Bob Boule brave enough to help.”

– Edward Alden, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; author of The Closing of the American Border and When the World Closed Its Doors

"Smuggler is a truth-stranger-than-fiction story that captures all of the complexity of American border security and immigration politics. Packed with unforgettable characters, Reece Jones and Greg Boos help shine an important spotlight on the little-understood and little-covered challenges of the northern border, where some of the nation's oddest crimes have long occurred."

– Garrett Graff, Pulitzer Prize Finalist author of Watergate: A New History

Smuggler is a must-read true story of a larger-than-life man grappling with the moral complexities of his actions. Reece Jones and Greg Boos offer a fascinating glimpse into migration in the era of asylum and lay bare the complicated reality of border law enforcement, revealing how accountability for federal misconduct can be elusive.” 

– Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow, American Immigration Council

Smuggler is a real-life thriller that proves the adage that fact is stranger than fiction. Jones and Boos deliver a hard-edged story about one man’s survival on the longest undefended border in the world. Bob Boule and his Smuggler’s Inn provide a vivid setting for the personal, cultural, and legal struggles swirling around our so-called ’forgotten’ U.S.–Canadian border. Highly recommended!” 

– Margaret Stock, MacArthur Fellow and leading national security and immigration attorney

“An engrossing legal thriller. Bob Boulé's story demonstrates how the enforcement of border and immigration laws – from the front line all the way to the Supreme Court – is violent, deceptively characterizing people as criminals, threats, and unsavory beings. Smuggler explains how ICE and Border Patrol agents have incredibly wide powers and broad immunity for their brutal behavior and forces us to ask what kind of society we want to live in and what rules should govern us."

– Jamie Chai Yun Liew, immigration lawyer, law professor, and author of Ghost Citizens and Dandelion.

Smuggler is a gripping and timely account that shatters the myth of a benign northern frontier, revealing the Canada–US border as a site of violence, impunity, and refuge. It offers an unforgettable portrait of Bob Boulé and the Smuggler's Inn, where asylum seekers, drug networks, and security agencies collide in the most ordinary of spaces. By weaving together gangland hits, confidential informant files, and midnight crossings through a Blaine backyard, the book traces Bob's deepening compassion for the refugees fleeing persecution at his door, even as the Safe Third Country regime forecloses the very pathways to protection they seek.”

– Sharry Aiken, Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, Canada

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