You know what it takes to hold the line against an enemy with better equipment, larger forces and seemingly endless resources. Every hour you're on the job, you know that among the cars and trucks and conveyances that stretch out sometimes beyond your line of vision, back into places where U.S. law means little or nothing, there is cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and an endless array of miscellaneous narcotics - and you are the only thing standing between this chemical plague and millions of American communities.

Tough job
In 1991, a group of Customs executives and managers met in Long Beach, Calif., to talk about just how tough narcotics interdiction really is, especially for inspectors confronting an exponential increase in commercial cargo. Customs legend is filled with stories of inspectors with extraordinary seizure records relying on instinct and experience, but, by the early 1990s, times had changed. There were just too many conveyances, too many places to hide an illegal cache.

Customs inspectors already tasked with examining suspicious cargo discovered that traffickers were just as likely to conceal narcotics in the conveyances used to transport the cargo - in tires, rims, false doors, floors and ceilings, handles, horns, in seats, floorboards, dashboards, engines, headlights, rear lights, and secret compartments located anywhere an ingenious trafficker might be able to hide it.

The meeting in California ended in consensus: the men and women charged with inspecting cargo and conveyances for Customs needed special, intense, and up-to-date training. That special training program came to be known as "SBIT" (Southern Border Interdiction Training), conducted at the Port of Laredo, Tex. Originally designed to train southern land border inspectors, SBIT quickly earned a reputation that drew southern and northern border inspectors, border patrol agents, USDA inspectors, state and local law enforcement officers, and foreign customs officers from Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Program instructors were recruited from the field, men and women with the kind of expertise that comes from years on the frontlines of the drug war.

Today, inspectors working or assigned to Contraband Enforcement Teams (CET) within Commercial Operations see SBIT as the key to effective interdiction. Six days of intensive, hands-on training with instructors and inspectors assigned to the Colombia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo follow 48 hours of intensive classroom work. Border concealment, cargo concealment, and Automated Commercial System selectivity/Risk Management are just a few of the topics the program touches - "student" inspectors are also trained in the use of high-tech tools like the Buster, fiber optic scope, laser range finder, the X-ray van, truck X-ray and VACIS X-ray. Training also includes the highly effective K-9 presentation, non-lethal control techniques, railroad operations/concealment, and controlled deliveries. In the end, of course, it's all law enforcement terminology for recruiting the best instructors - from ports like San Ysidro, Calexico, Nogales, San Luis, El Paso, Laredo, Hidalgo, Brownsville, Miami, and Detroit.

Customs inspector Carlos Fuentes operates a full-truck x-ray at the Port of Nogales.

Training pays off
Students in SBIT prove the program's effectiveness every day. In one case, a K-9 alerted students to a tractor pulling an empty flatbed. A nervous driver in a hurry to leave raised suspicions even higher. The fifth wheel area of the trailer looked funny, but even so, no one could find a hidden compartment. Then a student suggested unhooking the tractor because his SBIT instructor had happened to mention one day that an access plate could be easily positioned under the fifth wheel area.

SBIT training paid off that day, just as it has on so many other occasions. When the tractor was disconnected from the trailer, a hidden compartment was discovered. It was a "find" that instinct or luck could not have guaranteed, and proof that SBIT was making a difference.

SBIT is a success for many reasons, not least of which is the support it receives from Headquarters, from Customs Service Academy management, and from the Port of Laredo, which hosts the training. It also works because the program stays current. SBIT instructors understand all too well that the techniques used by law enforcement must keep pace with the innovative strategies devised by traffickers - that we must be adaptive enough to shift our tactics when traffickers shift theirs.

The men and women learning their trade at SBIT understand what they're up against and where they'll be sent after they finish their training. But they also know they have an advantage. Long before they confront the enemy, they will have been trained by experts to recognize his tactics and patterns.