May 28, 1924: Congress establishes United States Border Patrol

On this day in 1924, the U.S. Congress established the United States Border Patrol as part of the Immigration Bureau, an arm of the Department of Labor.

Its duties included the prevention of smuggling and the arrest of illegal entrants into the United States. During Prohibition smuggling absorbed most of the attention of the border patrol, as bootleggers avoided the bridges and slipped their forbidden cargo across the Rio Grande by way of pack mules. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt united the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization into the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and in 1940 the patrol moved out of the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice.

From 1942 to 1964, the border patrol recruited Mexican nationals, called braceros, authorizing them to visit the United States for specific periods of time as legal agricultural workers. In 1954, however, as illegal immigration along the Mexican border soared, the patrol inaugurated Operation Wetback, a large repatriation project.

The 1980s and 1990s saw an influx of thousands of immigrants, both legal and illegal, from Mexico and Central America to the Rio Grande Valley.

CLARENCE M. CHILDRESS, 1877-1919

At 3 a.m. on April 13, 1919, Mounted Watchman Childress and his partner, Mounted Watchman Leroy D. Straw, were on duty near Monument 9, known as "The Island", near El Paso, Texas. The officers observed a man come near the line on the Mexican side and a few seconds later three men ran from the United States side into Mexico and joined the man waiting there. The group then moved several hundred feet into Mexico and a few minutes later seven men came to the line which at that point was marked by a barbed wire fence. Two of the seven held down the barbed wire fence with their feet while the other five, with sacks on their backs, crossed to the American side. The officers made a challenging run at the smugglers and the two who had remained on the line immediately opened fire while the other five dropped the sacks they were carrying and ran toward Mexico. The officers returned the fire and all seven of the smugglers ran further into Mexico, disappearing over the mesa. While the officers were pursuing the smugglers, Childress said, "I am hit and going to telephone." Officer Straw proceeded to the point where the smugglers had abandoned their contraband where he remained, expecting Childress to return. When Childress failed to return to the scene within a reasonable time, Mounted Watchman Straw became concerned and proceeded to a house where a telephone was available. There he learned that Childress had been seriously wounded and was being cared for pending the arrival of an ambulance. An emergency operation was performed on Mounted Watchman Childress but he failed to recover. Death occurred at 9:10 a.m. on the morning of April 16, 1919.

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