Border Tales

120 degree heat in the San Luis summers. Wind chills in the single digits in the Nogales winters. Wild summer monsoons Pacific gales. Sonora Desert sand storms. No matter. The border never shuts down. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year. Officers of Customs and Border Protection--CBP--are on duty at the Arizona ports of entry.

Besides the weather and the tedium of the never ending streams of trucks and cars and pedestrians, there is the stark reality of what faces the border officers every single day. Drug smugglers, illegal entrants, wanted felons and a baker's dozen of sundry other miscreants. Every single border officer has to face it every single day. Mixed in with the ordinary commerce of the border is the criminal element continually trying to 'beat' the officers. Some times they do. Sometimes they don't.

This is the story of those who don't.

And of those who catch them.