Inspecting Agricultural Products | To Catch a Smuggler

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SIMS: This Lagos, Nigeria flight is known for us as a high-risk flight. I love working this flight. There are a lot of medicinals that we're picking up. It's just an interesting melting pot of agricultural products.

Good morning.

MAN: Good morning. How are you?

SIMS: How are you?

SIMS: I'm good. We're gonna scan this flight and we'll see what we have. Do you have any food items in your bags?

SIMS: What do you have, sweetheart?

SIMS: Frozen soups?

SIMS: I try to give off positive energy, you know, to the passenger. You've done this before?

SIMS: Uh-huh. You learned your lesson before.

SIMS: All right, good to know. They're more receptive to understanding the process.

SIMS: You got a list?

SIMS: I love it, awesome, awesome, awesome.

SIMS: Awesome. They're more receptive to wanting to help to not bring anything that's gonna potentially harm US agriculture as a whole.

We do have a pest that has been found, right there.

WOMAN: Oh.

SIMS: The fear is, worst case scenario, an invasive species gets out into the environment. They can cause massive destruction to agricultural products or plant products that we have currently here in the US.

Good morning.

MAN: Good morning, how are you?

SIMS: I'm good, how are you? Any food items in your bag?

MAN: Yes, food is here and here.

SIMS: What kind of food items do you have?

SIMS: All right, is that all the food you have?

SIMS: Okay, once I start going through the bags, if something prohibited is found, you could potentially receive a penalty, a civil penalty for failure to declare, okay?

All right. All right, so here we go.

SIMS: Uh-hmm. This is garri. I have to look through your garri to make sure. Garri is a form of the cassava and when it comes in bundles like this, we have people that stick other items, so that's what I'm doing now, just inspecting his garri.

You said you had garri, you have dried fish.

SIMS: But you didn't declare this. This is not allowed, sweetheart.

MAN: Hey!

SIMS: Uh-huh. This is not allowed.

MAN: Oh.

SIMS: Egusi is a melon seed.

MAN: But I passed through.

SIMS: And in this form, it's prohibited, because of a storage pest that we're concerned about, one of them is called Kapra beetle.

MAN: Ah.

SIMS: You will cry?

MAN: Yes.

SIMS: Well, you, I don't want you to cry, but I will be taking it, because it's prohibited.

SIMS: No, sugar. I get it, egusi soup, I know, and it's very delicious. But, when entering, I cannot let this pass. Stop looking at it, let me take it away.

All right, so I appreciate you. Have a wonderful day, okay?

I try to be very sympathetic, knowing that it's a local hometown treat that is specific to that region. I try to go into it with a heart, but this is what is set forth when it comes to protecting US agriculture.

Okay. What we got next?

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.