Meet the Boy Scouts of the 21st century

The Explorers, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts, have long prepared teenage members to become police officers and firefighters. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Explorer posts, working with local and federal law enforcement agencies, have added programs to train members in confronting terrorism, illegal immigration and border violence. Here, Explorers in a drill with the Imperial County, Calif., sheriff's office prepared to enter a building taken over by terrorists who had begun shooting hostages.

In El Centro, Calif., Explorers portraying Border Patrol agents rushed into a room filled with fake poison gas and aimed their weapons at a man before realizing he was a wounded hostage.

Dave Holletz, of the Brawley, Calif., police department, entered after the Explorers had killed the last hostage-taker. "Forget the injured, forget the dead," Mr. Holletz advised the Explorers. "Accomplish your mission: terminate the shooter."

I was a Cub Scout and Boy Scout in the 1950s. Things seem to have changed a bit, especially in this affiliate program...

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters…

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy…

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns — known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets — in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

…one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”

All photos: Todd Krainin for The New York Times