On a hot day in October, Jacques is patrolling the dirt roads carved through San Diego\'s backcountry canyons by Border Patrol plows. As he steers his Dodge, Jacques keeps an eye out for telltale signs of immigrants: empty plastic bottles, discarded clothes.He notices a blue cap bouncing up and down below the road, in one of the deep crevices.\n\nThis is the area immigrants call El Cerro, Spanish for forest, an area near the eastern outskirts of Tijuana near the town of Tecate. It\'s a backcountry dominated by thick native forest, steep canyons and streams that blur border lines on maps.\n\nJacques stops his sport utility vehicle and sprints into the canyon after a couple trying to scurry up the rocks. He catches and handcuffs them. As he waits for another Border Patrol vehicle to pick up his catch, he interviews them and suspects they have criminalbackgrounds.\n\nBorder Patrol agents run their prints and confirm it: The woman has been convicted of forgery; the man has four different drunk-driving offenses and has been formally deported once before. Both were headed for San Francisco.\n\nOn any given day, Jacques said, more than 20 percent of theillegal immigrants being caught at the Barrett Junction checkpoint in San Diego\'s backcountry have criminal records in the United States.\n\n\"They keep coming back,\" Jacques said. \"You see the flavors of these people,\" he said, noting things like the tattoos, the shaved heads, the attitude. \"And youknow you\'re going to be seeing them later. It\'s a matter of when.\" Agent, alien, border, Bush, drug, Free, illegal, immigration, Nacho, partol, President, Ramos, smuggler