FOZ DO IGUA??U, Brazil – On a chilly morning, with a breeze blowing in from Paraguay, Customs officials occasionally stop and search vehicles crossing Brazil’s busiest border point, looking for contraband.
Most passengers are poor Brazilians, carrying electronics they were commissioned to buy duty-free over the river in Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este, but there is a more dangerous trade too.
“It’s not unusual to find drugs or arms,” said Leonardo, a tall Brazilian Customs official with a few day’s stubble who has been working the bridge for two years. You start to get an eye for it,” he said, watching cars crawl across the open border.
With just days to go before the Olympics start in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian security forces have shifted their gaze to an even more amorphous crime: terrorism.
They have increased checks at this border post ? where tens of thousands of people cross back and forth every day ? and have set up a control room with access to dozens of cameras watching different points of the frontier. Intelligence officials have long pointed to this border region, home to a sizable Muslim community, as a weak point in Brazilian security.
With an estimated 500,000 foreigners descending on Rio for the Olympics and recent attacks on European cities raising security concerns, the daunting task of monitoring and controlling the border area between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has come back into focus.
Last month, Brazilian authorities arrested 12 people on suspicion of supporting Islamic State and discussing an attack during the Games.
It was the first time the government has admitted potential terrorist activity within its borders.
Police say they are monitoring a further 100 people with possible links to Islamic extremism, most of them here in the tri-border area, or TBA as it is known in security circles.
The point where Foz do Igua?u in Brazil, Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and Puerto Iguazu in Argentina meet, is a popular tourist spot to access the thundering Iguazu Falls. It is also a major smuggling route.
