Inside our border's first line of defense

In a given shift at LAX's international terminal Customs and Border Protection has about 150 officers working the line, processing an average of 8,000 passengers.

The person in charge of making sure a smuggler, fugitive or terrorist doesn't sneak in?

Sergio Espinoza.

Sergio Espinoza, Assistant Port Director: My responsibilities are managing our entire passenger operations for incoming international arrivals. We've got tons riding on our shoulders.

Right now there's a passenger Espinoza’s officers have flagged.

Sergio Espinoza: He came in from Laos, off of China. He's traveled to United States two times prior to this trip. He was headed to the Minneapolis area. Based on where he was coming from. Based on the fact he was traveling alone. We call it a cold stop, meaning, the officer just detected some anomaly, some type of behavioral issue he picked up on the passenger and sent him back to our secondary area for processing.

It was a good call. As officers start to search his bag, they unwrap illegal drugs--but not heroin or cocaine. Instead, this man was caught with anabolic steroids.

Sergio Espinoza: In this type of fashion in ampoules, injectable-type like forms, they're pretty much going to be used for re-sale.

Typically, steroids like these would be sold on the black market to bodybuilders. Even high school athletes.

Sergio Espinoza: He also has codeine and medicines that would require you to have a prescription. But more importantly, the schedule 4 anabolic steroids are definitely not allowable. So the next step is to call our investigative body, which is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to determine to see if they want to accept the case for prosecution.

After spending two hours with ICE, the passenger is brought to the area known as "hard secondary" to answer a few questions from officer Brenda Grant.

Officer Brenda Grant: Very important you tell the truth. If you lie, you can be subject to criminal penalties.

Out of darkness
Back in the Arizona desert, border patrol agents are hunting for a group of men with heavy backpacks.

The Mexican border is really close by here, probably not more than a mile. There are five individuals the agents are tracking.

But they've gone beyond the range of this mobile-surveillance system.

Agents carefully search the ground for tracks--a method perfected centuries ago.

Chuy: Agents are trained to track footprints.

But then even the footprints fade away.

Chuy: They've probably been doing it a while. They know exactly the route and they know some of the tricks to avoid detection and apprehension.

A dog is brought in.

Chuy: The canine is a big help because not only can he detect narcotics, he can detect the scent of people walking through here as well.

An hour later: success.

Agent: We tracked them and eventually we came up on a group of five individuals who were carrying large backpacks on their backs, they dropped them and ran, we were able to capture one. The others made it back to Mexico.

The backpack are full of pot, 40 to 45 pounds each.

And the reason agents lost the trail in desert?

This low-tech device -- a simple handmade broom.

Chuy: They were using this brush right here from the mesquite tree to brush out their footprints as they were walking through, across the roads or anywhere else like that on the trail, just so the agents couldn't follow them.

The new tools are certainly needed here, but so, it seems, are the old.

Wheels of fortune
Back in El Paso, Jazz the detector dog has drawn the officers' attention to the rear tire of this car coming in from Mexico.

Agent Rubio: Her alert is to sit down so as soon as she got the odor of narcotics she immediately sat down.

Rubio: Can you bleed it for me?

Answer: Uh huh.

Officer: It's there.

Agent: Please step out of the vehicle. Put your hands on your waist.

Chief CBP officer Rick Lopez: We're going to perform some sort of pat-down search to confirm that there is no contraband on the person, and then we will secure them.

Someone, somewhere is trying to reach him, and his car will soon spill out its secrets

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