Secondary screening - met upon deplaning
 

Arrived NRT > IAH on ANA first. Airport employee was standing at the bridge with my name on a sign. I'd never heard of ANA offering any ground service upon arrival but chalked it up to being similar to services offered by Thai. He ended up accompanying me through immigration and left when I got to the baggage area. Nothing noteworthy passing through immigration. The baggage guy at carousel addressed me by name and said he'd get my bag. Got the bag and headed to customs where the officer wrote something on the immigration printout and directed me to the secondary screening room.

This was a one way ticket originating in Bali and ending in Panama booked about 8 months previous. I had also been in Dubai, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong on the outbound from the US. I live in Houston and asked Thai staff at check-in in Bali to only check the bag to Houston since I was going to leave it in my vehicle and just take a carry-on to Panama. So what was the deal with being met at the plane? There were two other men who appeared to be Japanese in secondary. I believe they arrived on the same flight and both were connecting outside the US as well - one to Mexico and the other to Chile.

Was this likely random screening of all three of us due to the connecting flights?

ANA does this for certain passengers. That's what this was.

Plane-side-originated secondary screening in the US operates (among other ways) with passport checks of every person deplaning at the gate conducted by CBP, not sign-holding by airport employees.