events set the wheels of change into motion. On May 28, 1924, Congress passed the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924, officially establishing the U.S. Border Patrol for the purpose of securing the borders between inspection stations. In 1925 its duties were expanded to patrol the seacoast.

The Early Years

Officers were quickly recruited for the new positions. The Border Patrol expanded to 450 officers. Many of the early agents were recruited from organizations such as the Texas Rangers, local sheriffs and deputies, and appointees from the Civil Service Register of Railroad Mail Clerks.

The government initially provided the agents a badge and revolver. Recruits furnished their own horse and saddle, but Washington supplied oats and hay for the horses and a $1,680 annual salary for the agents. The agents did nothave uniforms until 1928.

In 1932 the Border Patrol was placed under the authority of two directors, one in charge of the Mexican border office in El Paso, the other in charge of the Canadian border office in Detroit. Liquor smuggling was a major concern because it too often accompanied alien smuggling. The majority of the Border Patrol was assigned to the Canadian border. Smuggling was commonplace along the Mexican border also. Whiskey bootleggers avoided the bridges and slipped their forbidden cargo across the Rio Grande by way of pack mules along the Southern border.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt combined the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization into the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1933. The first Border Patrol Academy opened as a training school at Camp Chigas,