Author: Joshua Rhett Miller

In an instant, I realized I took too many footsteps into the belly of the beast.

“Alto! Alto,” a Mexican border official yelled after letting out two piercing whistles. “Alto!”

While reporting on the fear wracking Fort Hancock, Texas, a tiny border town just across the Rio Grande River from El Porvenir, Mexico, I ventured onto the Fort Hancock-El Porvenir International Bridge. Just minutes earlier, after identifying myself as reporter on assignment, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official allowed me to walk on the two-lane international bridge to take pictures and get a closer glimpse of the Mexican town overrun by drug cartel-related violence.

The unidentified Mexican official, clad in a striped polo shirt and jeans with a short Malboro darting from his lip, demanded my camera. He spoke flatly and authoritatively in Spanish, but communicated in universal body language that I was to immediately remove my Nikon D40 from my neck.

I complied, attempting in broken Spanish to explain how I was merely there to take pictures from the 1,800-foot bridge and that I had no interest in entering Mexico.

“Yo no quiero entrar Mexico, senor,” I said. “Sacar fotografia.”

The man’s rapid response befuddled me, and in an attempt to quell the tense situation, I showed him the pictures I just snapped. One depicted the rugged Juarez Mountains to the south; another showed emptied liquor bottles along the banks of the Rio Grande. Yet another, taken just steps across the official border line on the bridge, showed the Mexican port of entry, where several men stood guard.

My heart, beating rapidly as ever, felt as if it was ready to burst through my chest. I wondered if I was about to be detained on the wrong side of the border. But after deleting the photo of the Mexican port of entry, and raising my hands in an unmistakably apologetic manner, the Mexican official allowed me to walk back onto U.S. soil. I smiled wide and shook the man’s hand whose face I shall never forget. Day’s old stubble dominated his thirtysomething face, and his piercing brown eyes felt as if they saw something I didn’t. Perhaps they did.

Now just steps from the Fort Hancock port of entry, I felt relieved – my troubles were over. I was mistaken.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent who allowed access to the bridge was now nowhere to be found, and his colleagues wanted answers.

“What are you doing?” one agent asked. “I’m going to need to see some I.D.”

After producing my driver’s license and an employee identification badge, I was instructed to enter the border station to answer a few questions. Minutes later, after successfully passing a background check, I was allowed to go. I then walked briskly to my rented car, nearly jogging. But just as I started my Hyundai with Colorado plates, a U.S. Customs and Border official, identifiable only by his nametag “Lee,” again asked for my license. The next five minutes were utterly harrowing. I knew I hadn’t broken any laws, but the cynic in me knew not to breathe easy just yet.

Agent Lee exited the border patrol station 10 minutes later with my license in hand and a wry smile on his face. He then told me I was free to go after saying I ought to be more careful.

“It’s dangerous over there,” he said. “That’s a place you don’t want to go.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Ernesto Enriquez Corralejo lives in a dilapidated home in Fort Hancock, Texas, with no water, gas or electricity.  But that’s better conditions, he says, than in his hometown of El Porvenir, Mexico, where drug cartels continue to terrorize residents.

“It’s bad, real bad, sir,” Correlejo, 46, told FoxNews.com. “It’s not safe to be there.”

Corralejo, who came to the U.S. at age 4 with his family, said he knows of at least 20 people who have been killed by drug cartels for either not cooperating in the drug trade or fort not settling marijuana or cocaine debts.

“If you don’t got money to pay them back, they’re going to get you,” he said. “These people are being killed for no reason.”

Corralejo – clad in a dirty green sweatshirt and heavily weathered pants – said he has not worked in 10 years, unable to find a job in industries like construction, farming and manufacturing. His silver beard and hair are unkempt, and most of his upper teeth are missing.

Corralejo is able to survive, he says, with help from his older brother and by doing odd jobs in the Texas town of roughly 1,700 residents. He looks over the border, just a stone’s throw away, with equal parts of disgust and sorrow.

“All my friends, man, all my friends have been killed,” he said. “And no one knows really why.”

Corralejo’s rundown home is not far from Fort Hancock High School, where, according to one secretary, officials are preparing for more students as families in Mexico send their children to live with relatives on the U.S. side of the border.

For Corralejo, who said he frequently hears gunfire pulsating through the Mexican town after sundown, the choice is clear.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “They will be safer here.”

While driving along the Rio Grande River, near the Texas border town of Fort Hancock, Border Patrol Agent Joe Romero spots fresh footprints in the muddy banks. His eyes immediately widen.

“It’s hard to get bored doing this,” Romero says. “If you’re bored, it’s ’cause you’re not looking. There’s always something to learn out here.”

For the past four years, Romero has been one of 2,600 U.S. Border Patrol agents scouring the 125,000-square mile El Paso sector, extending from Fort Hancock to the New Mexico-Arizona state line, for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

During that span, Romero said he’s seen the number of apprehended individuals in his “zone” decrease tenfold, from roughly 122,000 in fiscal year 2006 to roughly 15,000 last year. And while it may seem counterintuitive, Romero says that’s a good thing.

“When you’ve got fewer people to deal with, those that do try to come across, your success rate is going to increase because you have more manpower,” he said. “Plus, it let’s us know we’re being more effective in the deterrence mentality.”

But escalating violence in El Porvenir, a Mexican town just four miles from Fort Hancock, has some residents in the Texas town worried that drug cartel-related violence may soon spill over into their backyard.

And while Romero is quick to point out that no bloodshed has occurred in Fort Hancock thus far, and that residents there should feel safe, the potential for violence along the smuggling corridor is real, he said.

“Has it happened? Not yet,” Romero said. “Is it a threat? Obviously.”

FoxNews.com will examine the ongoing efforts to patrol the border in the next few days, focusing on the town of Fort Hancock, where at least 30 residents from El Porvenir have asked for political asylum.

Romero will also provide more details from his 10-hour patrol shifts, offering the latest ways he has seen illegal immigrants try to cross the border and how he can literally smell if he’s missed someone.

“There’s always somebody out there who can do something better and in a more creative way than you can,” said Romero, referring to drug mules or illegal aliens. “It’s serious business. There’s something to learn out here everyday. If you’re not learning, you’re not looking.”