U.S. turns to horses to secure borders

By Tim Gaynor

ALTAR VALLEY, Ariz (Reuters) - U.S. Border Patrol agent Galen Huffman leans over the saddle to look at faint tracks in a cattle trail leading up from the Mexico border.

He follows the tracks at a brisk trot through thick brush, up and down into rocky washes, then pauses as his horse twitches its ears and turns around nervously.

"I have bodies," he says, as the first of a group of 11 illegal immigrants, wrapped in hats and scarves against the chill morning air, peel themselves up from the desert floor several miles from the nearest road.

Horses have been part of the Border Patrol since the agency was founded to secure the United States borders against liquor smugglers and unlawful immigrants in the 1920s, and now they are making a comeback.

Agents dressed in leather chaps and broad-brimmed hats are increasingly being used to regain control over the most rugged areas of the southwest frontier with Mexico and now on the northern border with Canada.

"Most of the traffic is being pushed into these mountainous areas which are harder to work. They are very remote," said Bobbi Schad, a horse patrol supervisor from Tucson. "With a horse you can get up in there."

"They realized we were so much better at controlling certain areas, so they said 'hey, let's keep utilizing an old-school tool and go back to the basics.'"

STURDY HORSES

When the Border Patrol was founded in 1924, recruits on the southwest border had to provide their own horses, tack and guns, although they were given bullets, animal feed and $25 a week.

They were sent out on the back trails from California to south Texas to tackle "tequileros" -- smugglers hauling barrels and goatskins filled with liquor north from Mexico on horses, mules and burros during the period of Prohibition.

Modern-day mounted agents secure many of the same out-of-the-way trails as their predecessors, although now they track groups of illegal immigrants and hardy drug traffickers, some armed with knives, pistols and assault rifles.

Like their forebears, present-day Border Patrol agents continue to use sturdy quarter horses -- so called as they are the fastest breed over a quarter mile, and are also renowned for their strength and stamina.

Most of the stocky, muscular animals are bought from horse dealers or at auctions, although a number are seized from Mexican smugglers caught riding over the border with loads of marijuana crammed into burlap sacks.

"Some of the smugglers have a good eye for a horse," Schad told Reuters as she rode out over a sandy cattle trail in the Altar Valley south of Tucson.

"They are raised in the mountains and they are good ranch horses ... and they are some of the best that we have."