'Carloads of people pulled up to the house and kicked the front door in'

Rice told 9News home invaders used a pole to smash through the front door and threaten his family.

“A couple of carloads of people pulled up to the front of the house and kicked the front door in and threatened our son,” Rice recalled.

The horrifying home invasion follows a spate of similar crimes in the usually “happy” border town, which has become a paradise for young criminals.

There have been more than 1000 offences recorded in Goondiwindi in the past year alone.

Its location on the edge of NSW makes it a tough one for police to track down perpetrators.

Taskforce Guardian – which has seen NSW and Queensland police join forces – stepped in to tackle the spike in robberies and break-ins in a three-day cross-border crackdown.

“I will say to these offenders, if you target these locations we will identify you and we will use our intelligence skills and we will use our counterparts in Queensland to arrest you,” NSW Police’s Andrew Holland told 9News.

9News was invited to see inside the task force, which involved Queensland and NSW police officers teaming up to hunt down the alleged criminals.

Real-time data sharing between both police forces has led to several criminals being tracked down and arrested.

The three-day operation resulted in 10 people arrested on more than 40 different offences.

“With the intelligence we have now, with the forensics we have now, they won’t escape us,” Holland added.

Senior officers have told 9News that cross-border policing does have its challenges.

However a “border bubble” could make things easier for police.

“We need to de-shackle the police, get rid of the red tape and make it easier for police who work in cross-border communities to do their job working in one community,” said Queensland cross-border commissioner Ian Leavers.