(The Center Square) – Texas law enforcement officers working through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star, continue to apprehend illegal border crossers, tracking them through brush, rugged terrain and on barren ranchland.
Integral to their efforts are four-legged team members with paws and hooves who graduated from new classes or celebrated a new year of service this November.
Texas Department of Public Safety has long used K9 teams, considered essential for narcotics and explosive detection and tracking fugitives. But they’ve also been integral to border security operations working with DPS brush teams and federal and local law enforcement, DPS says.
In November, DPS graduated nine new K-9 teams and four certified K9 Tech Trainers who deployed across Texas.
DPS’ K-9 program includes 100 personnel, including 85 handlers working with German Shepherds, Dutch Shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Labrador Retrievers and a Vizsla. Each K-9 team completes a rigorous nine-week training program, with six weeks of pre-training solely for the K-9s. The dogs are trained to follow human scent trails over long distances and in tough terrains, including deserts, brush, urban areas and waterways, DPS says.
One new graduate, Belgian Malinois K-9 Stark, and his handler recently made their first apprehension with mounted Border Patrol agents in Carrizo Springs after tracking two illegal border crossers. In Zavala County, K-9s Shark, Arya, and Bona tracked illegal border crossers for three miles helping law enforcement apprehend five people, including two from Vietnam. They’d bailed out of a vehicle during a human smuggling event, DPS said.
K9s play a vital role in locating “those trying to avoid capture across rugged ranch lands,” DPS said. OLS officers often track illegal border crossers across ranch lands who commit a range of crimes, The Center Square has reported.
This fall, Texas DPS’ newly created Border Mounted Patrol Unit celebrated one year of operation in Texas border counties. Its first BMPU class graduated last November and has since been providing additional support to Texas DPS brush teams, Border Patrol and local partners to pursue illegal border crossers in remote and challenging terrain.
DPS’s BMPU’s first class included three teams riding Quarter Horses based near Eagle Pass, Carrizo Springs and Del Rio in Dimmit, Maverick and Val Verde counties. BMPU troopers must pass a six-week training program, including through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Horse Patrol Program. This includes navigation, terrain adaptability, tracking and law enforcement operations on horseback, DPS said. The second BMPU class graduated in August.
Border Patrol agents have relied on horses for border security operations since the agency’s founding more than 100 years ago.
“Horse Patrol Agents ride in challenging terrain, which may include environmentally protected and/or privately owned sensitive geographic locations,” and “are the most viable, and, in some cases, the only option for the U.S. Border Patrol to enter into regions inaccessible by any other means of patrol,” CBP explains. “Without the Horse Patrol, these areas would remain unpatrolled and susceptible to transnational criminal activity.”
DPS’s BMPU began operations in Kinney County successfully assisting sheriff deputies apprehend illegal border crossers who bailed out of vehicles being pursued by law enforcement as well as gotaways.
One year later, BMPU working with K-9 units are still tracking illegal border crossers on Kinney County ranches. One recent arrest was of a Mexican national and previously deported felon, who’d been deported multiple times since 1998. His lengthy criminal history includes convictions for assault family violence, weapons charges, evading arrest and drug possession, DPS said. He was last deported in August only to illegally reenter the country and be arrested by DPS BMPU in October.
Both the BMPU and K-9 units are primarily pursuing gotaways – those who illegally enter between ports of entry to evade capture, don’t make immigration claims and don’t return to Mexico. More than two million gotaways were reported by Border Patrol agents during the Biden administration, The Center Square exclusively reported.
