The United Nation's International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, tried to answer the question as early as 1976, when 23 nations met to draft a treaty to deter international child abduction. Their efforts eventually produced the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, a treaty that seeks to curb such abductions by providing judicial remedies to parents seeking the return of a child wrongfully removed or retained. (Abductions include children legally visiting the non-custodial parent, who then refuses to return them.) As of July 2001, the Convention is in force in more than 50 nations, including the United States.

But treaties won't stop a serious-minded non-custodial parent from abducting the kids if that's his or her intention. As with drugs and terrorists, border enforcement is an indispensable defense against the international exploitation of children.

Shortly before noon on February 24, 2004, CBP Officer Luis Astete at Portland International Airport in Oregon got a call from Special Agent Chap Sung, the U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agent on duty.

Photo Credit: Thomas Brooks

CBP Officer Luis Astete

"Luis, I know it's a long shot, but can you try to find a person for me?" Sung had worked with Astete before, and he knew that Astete's 12 years of experience in passenger analysis made him the "go-to" man if you wanted to find someone trying to enter or leave the country.

Sung went on to describe a call he'd just received from the in-law of a distraught woman who claimed that her ex-husband, a Peruvian national, had kidnapped her children. An abusive man, he'd threatened to take them before. And one of his relatives had called her that morning to say that he, the relative, had driven the ex and the two children to the airport. From there, he claimed, they were going to Peru.

As soon as Astete heard "missing children," he hit the ground running. He knew that if this guy managed to get the kids out of the country, they might never see their mother again.

"Okay, what's his name?"
"Cesar Gutierrez."

Some readers may not know that "Cesar Gutierrez" is the Spanish equivalent of "Jim Smith." So all Astete had to do was check every single passenger information system available to him to find what airports and airlines in the continental U.S. had flights to South America. From there, he could narrow his search to Cesar Gutierrez and, hopefully, find one headed for Peru with two children.

Of course, this assumed that Gutierrez was leaving Portland by plane. He could have driven east and flown from New York City, Miami, Washington-anywhere-or north and flown from Canada, or to Texas, where he could drive across the border.

So Astete's task was to piece together whatever information he could glean and see if he could find the right Cesar Gutierrez.

He keyed into APIS, the Advanced Passenger Information System, and found four airlines with flights leaving Portland International and connecting elsewhere in the U.S. with flights to Peru.

He also found some interesting stuff about one inbound Cesar Gutierrez. This guy had flown from Colombia to Miami in November 2003 with $23,000 in cash-enough money, Astete knew, to buy false travel documents for children. And according to APIS, he was still in the United States.

So now all Astete had to do was run around the airport and speak with representatives from all four airlines, none of which was on the same concourse, to find out whether that same guy was booked on one of them with two children in tow.

Some readers might wonder why he didn't just phone. First, since 9/11, airline representatives won't release passenger information over the phone because anyone can claim to be law enforcement. But a personal visit by a uniformed, credentialed CBP officer? Now that makes a difference.

There was also the time element. According to Astete's research, all four flights had left Portland hours ago and were scheduled to leave the country within the next 30 minutes.

Finally, there was the "hold" element. Astete knew he was about as likely to be struck by lightening as he was not to be left in a holding queue and forgotten. It was clear that if his hunch were to play out, it would have to be on foot.

He asked his partner, CBP Officer Christopher Gunderson, to take two of the airlines while he took the other two. This meant they would have to run, literally, from the CBP office at the far end of the lower level on concourse "D" to the airlines' departure gates upstairs on the A, B, C, and D concourses. And if they came up empty at the departure gates, they'd have to run all the way to the front of the airport to speak with agents at the ticket counters.

Astete hit the jackpot at his first stop, American Airlines on Concourse D. He explained the urgency of the situation to the gate agent, Gary Johnson, who checked American's departure records.

Bingo! Cesar Gutierrez had left Portland at 7:30 that morning on a flight for Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, where he was booked on a flight to Peru that was supposed to take off in ...

Thirty-five minutes. And he was accompanied by two children.

As sand trickled steadily through the hourglass, Johnson, not having the authority to delay a plane or even intervene further, got his supervisor on the phone. Astete, meanwhile, reported back to Agent Sung on his cell phone, and then, using the airline's telephone at the departure gate, he called the gate agent at DFW, where...

He ran into more complications. Astete would have to speak to this gate agent's supervisor as well. He called Sung back to tell him that the Dallas flight was scheduled for takeoff, now, in about 15 minutes and that they needed authority-a warrant, some legal paper, any paper, the local police chief, the governor, if necessary-in order to detain the flight.

The only documentation they had at that time was a restraining order verifying that the children were not allowed to leave the state of Oregon. So Sung called the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department, where the family's domestic troubles had first begun to unravel, and asked a sheriff's deputy to fax the restraining order to the airline at DFW.

Although CBP officers and special agents have the authority to hold planes, these officers were almost halfway across the country facing the same obstacle Astete had faced at the beginning of his quest: invisibility. Plus, this supervisor was still a bit green, not even 30 years old, and was going by the book. And according to the "book," you don't delay a flight unless you're dealing with a terrorist, a snow storm, maybe a tsunami-it required a lethal, tangible threat-and Astete's phone call offered none of those.

Plus, he was right in the middle of loading an international flight. "Look," he told Astete, "I'm really busy and I can't deal with this right now."

But Astete would not be put off. "We're talking about a child abduction here. Just take a look at your reservations, and see if you've got a Gutierrez with two children."

The agent checked and found that he did. But, as Astete had suspected earlier, the children had fake passports with phony names.

The boarding agent was nervous. "Look, man, I can't just yank them off the plane. What if it's the wrong guy?"

That did it. Astete, ready to move heaven and earth if he had to, almost hit the roof. "You need to check anyway! This is for the good of the country! What if it's not the wrong guy and you let them go?"

Sung, meanwhile, had put Astete on hold while he contacted the Portland Resident Agent in Charge, Joe Meisenheimer. Now Meisenheimer was on the phone with Dallas, and he wasn't having any more luck than Astete.

And Astete? With American Airlines' house phone pressed against the hearing aid in one ear-he'd lost his hearing when, as a tunnel rat with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, an enemy rocket exploded his radio inside an underground tunnel-and his specially-equipped cell phone clamped over the hearing aid in his other ear, he waited.

They must be very good hearing aids, because Astete could hear the boarding agent in Dallas loading the flight. He could hear the loud speakers making their "final call for all passengers going to Lima, Peru, on flight 947." He could hear the commotion as travelers schlepped their carry-on luggage past the gate agent. Those last few minutes before takeoff passed, for Astete, at a glacial pace.

Unbeknownst to him, Meisenheimer was trying frantically to get some cooperation. "I'm telling them that I have legal authority, but we're on the phone, so how do they really know?" he recalls. "And while there was a restraining order out on the guy, we didn't yet have a warrant, and [the airline] was ... disinclined, let's say, to interfere."

But Meisenheimer would not be put off either. "We had several phone lines open," said Meisenheimer. "Sung was calling the gate agent, then the boarding agent, doing his best to convey the urgency of the situation."

Meanwhile, Group Supervisor Dale Hillman was on the phone with the Dallas Police Department dispatcher, who didn't understand why we were even involved. Then he called the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department and district attorney to speed up an arrest warrant.

"And I was on another line with the Dallas police," Meisenheimer continues, "trying to get an officer to respond planeside."

By the time the officer arrived, the plane had departed, and the boarding area was deserted. But waiting at the gate counter in the nearly empty corridor were Gutierrez, his 16-year-old son, his four-year-old daughter, and the gate supervisor.

The airport police took him into custody, and two hours later, the children were on their way back to their mother in Oregon, courtesy of American Airlines. Although he had been charged with a state-level felony, extradition is an expensive process, especially when the state's as far away as Texas. The Clackamas County DA felt he had no choice but to let Gutierrez go. He returned to Peru 24 hours later.

CBP officers are known to go above and beyond to accomplish whatever is required; indeed, that kind of effort is written in between the lines of their job descriptions. How else can they find tons of narcotics in a single haul, zero in on the one potentially dangerous person in a long line of passengers, rescue illegal migrants from the desert or worse, without such dedication? They have delivered babies at checkpoints and helped haul murderers off foreign-bound flights, also moments before departure. And they have, against nearly all odds, been instrumental in reuniting a mother with children whom, but for clever thinking and playing against time, she might never have seen again. We offer our congratulations to CBP Officer Luis Astete for a job well done.

Editor's note: This story has an unusual postscript. Gutierrez returned to Dallas six weeks later. This time, thanks to Officer Astete and Agent Sung, he was on a watch list, and the airport police nabbed him when he landed.