KEY POINTS:
United States 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, 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 kilometres from the nearest road.
Horses have been part of the Border Patrol since the agency was founded to secure the US 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 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."
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 (400m), and are also renowned for their strength and stamina.
Last year, more than 870,000 illegal immigrants were arrested crossing over the border from Mexico, more than a third of them through the wilds of Arizona.
In addition to getting agents swiftly and stealthily up into the rugged, mountainous areas through which migrants and smugglers increasingly cross, agents say their horses are also active partners in detecting border crossers.
"Their sight and hearing is much sharper than ours. When they sense someone ... you feel it, and you know to get ready," Huffman said.
Mounted units in the busy smuggling corridor south of Tucson frequently arrest groups of 15 or 20 illegal immigrants, and sometimes more than 100 a time.
Once they have apprehended a group, agents often have to lead detainees for a kilometre or more to reach ranch roads where they can hand them over to colleagues with a vehicle. It is there that the horses' stock management skills come into their own, agents say.
"It's what we call cow sense. It's a herding instinct," Schad said, as she trailed a group of 18 Mexican migrants out of the desert on her horse, Freckles. "They gather people up ... and if they run, they have the ability and desire to chase them down," she added.
In the Tucson sector the patrol now has around 150 horses and 87 trained riders, around four times the number that they had five years ago.
Horse units are also being used in Texas, California and Washington.
While high-tech border policing gathers pace, with unmanned spy planes, ground radar and electronic sensors, mounted agents are confident their horses will continue to play a key role in years to come.
- REUTERS
