Mounted patrols are as old as America itself, and horse patrols were in use on the border and elsewhere long before the Border Patrol was founded in 1924. On any given day, the CBP has around 334 horse patrols on duty. Many of the horses in use were formerly wild mustangs that have been trained for Border Patrol duty.
In spite of the patrols’ long history and wide deployment, many Americans were unaware of this branch of border enforcement until an incident on September 19 where mounted agents were filmed attempting to protect the border from illegal Haitian migrants.
Officials and immigration zealots unfamiliar with the concept of “reins” quickly charged the agents with “whipping” the illegal migrants.
Biden, for example, in his usual awkward phrasing, said the migrants were being “strapped,” and vowed: “I promise you, those people will pay. They will be — an investigation is underway now, and there will be consequences. There will be consequences.”
DHS chief Mayorkas at first was in favor of the agents before he was against them, but eventually pronounced himself “horrified,” and declared, “One cannot weaponize a horse to aggressively attack a child. . . .”
Encouraged by these officials, activists responded by–what else?–immediately organizing a “March of Dignity” through the streets of El Paso.
Then an organization that calls itself “Defund Hate” demanded the abolition of both CBP and ICE.
The director of “BlackPac,” an organization dedicated to getting out the black vote, was aghast at the language used by the agents, tweeting:
It’s not just the images. It’s also what they shouted from their horses.
And the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) fell back on the inevitable “not who we are” charge:
The scenes of CBP officers on horses grabbing and corralling fleeing refugees are shameful and not the images of a country that historically has welcomed the world’s huddled masses.
Yet the photographer who took the allegedly incriminating photos, Paul Ratje, said the incident was being misinterpreted. Ratje, who took the photos from the Mexican side of the border, said,
I’ve never seen them whip anyone. He was swinging [the rein], but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.
The Washington Examiner quoted a senior federal law enforcement official who said, in the Examiner’s words:
In this incident, the agent was acting in a way to keep migrants from continuing forward. The agent performed a “twirl of the reins” to keep people back from the horse for their safety, and no one was whipped.
So far, the swift investigation promised by the White House has not returned any results. They’re no doubt trying to figure some way to spin it so that that they were right all along.
For more, see the Washington Examiner.