in 1994, the man in charge of el paso is sylvestre reyes.en i first got here, the problem that i saw in this area was a strategy that pretty much guaranteed us to fail at maintaining control of this border. narrator: before 1993, the border patrol more or less looked the other way allowing people to cross freely. the policy sort of invited the mexicans in for a game of "cat and mouse." the strategy required our officers to be in the neighborhoods here in the el paso area and then try and chase people down after they had made an illegal entry into the metropolitan area of el paso. narrator: sometimes they were captured one by one. sometimes they were rounded up in waves. chief reyes set forth a whole new approach to guarding the border. it's called "operation hold the line." reyes: what we did to adjust, or to compensate, for that is move all our agents right up on the international line itself, right up here on the rio grande river and maintain a deterrent posture 24 hours a day ven days a week. narrator: now, every 200 yards or so a solo ag