Rhinoplasty Confusion (Clip) | To Catch a Smuggler | National Geographic

What were you doing in Mexico?

Oh, okay. A couple of people have been doing that. Here's an essential part of entry with the summer upon us. We have high traffic, a lot of crossers. So we're seeing an increase of narcotics smuggling, people smuggling. COVID played a big role with human smuggling. Most of our smugglers are tourists come from Mexico. So when they were restricted from entering the country during the pandemic, a lot of organizations looked towards United States citizens to try and smuggle people.

Hi. Good morning. Whenever we have people crossing every day, 99% of those people are legitimate travel. But we have people that will get documents in Mexico. Either they buy the documents or they steal the documents and they present themselves as that person.

Hi. Look in the camera. So this facial recognition system is an extra layer of enforcement for us to determine, one, that the person is the person that she is presented. Do you mind just taking the mask off? I'm going to take a picture. And also help us determine their citizenship when they present a U.S. passport.

Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Okay. Subject presented a California driver's license as her identification. When we did the biometrics facial comparison, the picture did not match the picture that she probably has with her U.S. passport, so she was referred to secondary. So we can verify that that's the person within.

How are you, ma'am? Okay. Have you had a U.S. passport? Okay. Well, what happened to your passport?

Okay. She was very straightforward, always was looking at me. She didn't hesitate on responding when we told her that we were going to take the fingerprint. That's usually a sign that a person is being truthful.

We took her fingerprints and we corroborated that it was her. Thank you for your cooperation and you're good to go. Have a good one.