San Diego Border Patrol revives Horse Patrol Unit

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI)--Made up of twelve horses and 10 riders, the San Diego Sector Horse Patrol Unit surveils the area stretching from the sandy shores of Imperial Beach to the mountainous terrain of Boulevard.

“It’s a very important, just historical facet of our agency,” said Joseph Rood, San Diego Sector Border Patrol Public Affairs Officer.

The sector has a rich history dating back to 1924, when many patrol inspectors rode horses.

“Around the '50s, they started moving away from the horses, and they mostly used just vehicles, off-road vehicles,” said Victor Roldan, Border Patrol Agent.

However, Roldan says in 1979, San Diego was the first sector to bring back the Horse Patrol, but a few years ago, everything changed.

“It was a nationwide halt to operations at that time,” Rood said.

“The unit was temporarily stood down back in 2023 because of the large number of people coming across claiming asylum,” Roldan said.

Roldan says that with the significant amount of time it takes to complete the paperwork to process asylum cases, the San Diego sector was overrun.

“Now that that has slowed down quite a bit, we have a lot more manpower to go back out in the field,” Roldan said.

According to the border patrol, at this time last year, when the horse patrol was out of commission, they had apprehended approximately 280,000 people during that fiscal year.

“At this time right now, fiscal year 25, we are currently at about 47,000 apprehensions,” Rood said.

Which is an 83 percent decrease, according to Border Patrol.

Though apprehensions are down, some migrant advocates have concerns about the reimplementation of the horse patrol unit.

“The concerns go back to just a few years ago when Border Patrol in the Del Rio sector did use horses and were seen pushing Haitian migrants back into a small swath of land, appeared to be whipping at them as they were doing so,” said Pedro Rios, American Friends Service Committee Director.

“We know that the Department of Homeland Security, under this new administration, no longer has the same oversight agencies that they had just even a year ago,” Rios added.

Rios says he thinks they were using the horses to enforce immigration laws in a way that was subjecting people to unprovoked violence.

“There really isn’t an agency that would pursue an investigation regarding those complaints,” said Rios.

Though Border Patrol officials declined to comment on the Del Rio incident, they said all Border Patrol agents are held to a standard set by the Office of Professional Responsibility.

“They need to understand that all agents, regardless of their line duties, are held to the standard of the Office of Professional Responsibility,” Rood said.

Border Patrol says those interested in joining the horse patrol unit must first go through an interview process, a training program and meet a rigorous set of standards before they can then go out in the field.