A car every few seconds. Two seconds to read each one. Go. The land border is the only door where two countries actually touch - and everything about it is stranger than you think. Cars with doors packed solid and gas tanks that hold no gas. A tunnel longer than ten football fields. Turtles taped inside a smuggler's pants, heading out of the country. Cowboys - real ones, on horseback, right now - guarding America's cattle against a tick the size of a grain of rice.
Ride with Officer Mari Delgado, whose whole philosophy fits in three words - speed is mercy - and with Javi, the rookie who had to learn why. And then stand under the hot canopy for the chapter most books skip: the family whose van was searched and found honest, what the border owes them, and the argument about the cameras that remember your family's license plate too. Crack it open and discover: How officers read a car like a doctor reads a body The density meter, the fiber-optic scope, and the four-dollar tool that beats them both Why an alert can outrun any truck on the road Who really pays when the line is wrong - and the keys every driver holds Your turn in the hot seat: an 8, 200-pound mystery with the answer hiding on page two Illustrated narrative nonfiction for curious readers · Ages 10-13.
Every true case sourced. Includes a glossary, a "Test Your Knowledge" quiz, source notes, and an index.
A car every few seconds. Two seconds to read each one. Go. The land border is the only door where two countries actually touch - and everything about it is stranger than you think. Cars with doors packed solid and gas tanks that hold no gas. A tunnel longer than ten football fields. Turtles taped inside a smuggler's pants, heading out of the country. Cowboys - real ones, on horseback, right now - guarding America's cattle against a tick the size of a grain of rice.
Ride with Officer Mari Delgado, whose whole philosophy fits in three words - speed is mercy - and with Javi, the rookie who had to learn why. And then stand under the hot canopy for the chapter most books skip: the family whose van was searched and found honest, what the border owes them, and the argument about the cameras that remember your family's license plate too. Crack it open and discover: How officers read a car like a doctor reads a body The density meter, the fiber-optic scope, and the four-dollar tool that beats them both Why an alert can outrun any truck on the road Who really pays when the line is wrong - and the keys every driver holds Your turn in the hot seat: an 8, 200-pound mystery with the answer hiding on page two Illustrated narrative nonfiction for curious readers · Ages 10-13.
Every true case sourced. Includes a glossary, a "Test Your Knowledge" quiz, source notes, and an index.