Homeland Security Taking To The Sky In Drug Smuggling Fight

As soon as the aging P-3 surveillance plane rumbles off the island runway, a crew of three agents for U.S. Customs and Border Protection begins hunting with high-tech radar for anything that looks out of the ordinary in the vast Caribbean Sea.

It could be a fishing boat with no obvious fishing gear. A speed boat in the middle of open water and loaded with more gas cans than passengers. A sail boat that doesn’t quite sit right on the surface.

“To us, every dot out there is a possible bad guy,” said J.D., a senior agent, describing the faint white dots on his radar screen during a surveillance flight over the Caribbean Sea and South America last month.

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