Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Monday, May 04, 2015
Rio Grande Valley Adds To Border Horse Patrol
MISSION, Texas — Jared Barton has ridden horses since he was a toddler.
But rumbling on a Florida cattle ranch isn’t the same as the trails he’ll traverse going forward — the rough terrain of immigrant and drug smuggling trails in the Rio Grande Valley.
The Monitor reports Barton is one of the latest members of the U.S. Border Horse Patrol, a specialty group of agents that work on horseback and have been doing so since the early 1920s.
The 38-year-old agent was one of seven agents who officially completed a six-week training course to join the group in the Rio Grande Valley sector. The Horse Patrol has 30 agents working the sector, where there are plans to enlist another 10 agents and 10 horses by July.
Horse Patrol supervisor Ruben Garcia Jr., who has worked with the Border Patrol for more than 15 years, said the agency needed a new stable to keep its horses after it canceled a commercial boarding contract all while doubling the size of its herd to 30 horses.
Border Patrol partnered with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to convert an unused warehouse into the Morillo Banco Horse Patrol Compound. The stable, located about a mile from the Rio Grande, has room for up to 38 horses and features two full-sized barns on a two-acre plot.
The Rio Grande Valley sector’s Horse Patrol unit during the 2014 fiscal year caught about 10,500 people — the highest amount of apprehensions nationwide with one of the smallest herd of horses, Garcia said...more
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I realize the guvmint doesn't think this way and I know budgets are tight but it seems to me every agent should have at least a two horse string...'cause the terrain is rough and, well, you never know what can happen out there.
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