Migra!. Kelly Lytle Hernandez
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the establishment of the BPTS in El Paso, Texas, greatly empowered the officers of the turbulent El Paso District to shape the definition of the “Border Patrol way.”108 The establishment of the BPTS, therefore, was significant for the Border Patrol’s focus on the U.S.-Mexico border, with an area of concentration in the Texas-Mexico borderlands.
Among the first officers to be trained at the BPTS was Harlon B. Carter. Harlon grew up in Laredo, Texas, where the disjointed structure of U.S. immigration law enforcement had once allowed the city’s Mexicano majority and elite to dominate the development of local Border Patrol operations. In 1927, however, Clifford Perkins made an inspection trip to the area and was alarmed by the development of U.S. immigration control in the city. “Laredo was strictly a Mexican town. . . . probably ninety-percent of the people were either Mexican or of Mexican descent,” wrote Perkins, who distrusted the Laredo sector’s ability to enforce U.S. immigration restrictions independently. “The only Anglo on the police force was the chief himself,” which distressed Perkins. During his two-week investigation, Perkins waged a “full-scale housecleaning.” He charged local officials, the chief patrol inspector, and Border Patrol officers in the Laredo station with immigrant smuggling and forced just under half of Laredo’s twenty-eight Border Patrol inspectors and the chief patrol inspector to quit or be fired. Perkins then transferred select Border Patrolmen who had all been Texas Rangers into the Laredo sector because “all were experienced, well-disciplined fighters who knew the country well.”109
Detailing former Texas Rangers to Laredo was a strategy used to divorce the Border Patrol station from the local Mexican-American political elite. Tension quickly mounted between the ex-Rangers and the Laredo community, particularly the Laredo Police Department. While the Border Patrol enjoyed close relations with the local police in most borderland communities, in 1927 several officers of the Laredo Border Patrol “got in their Model T automobiles and spent about a half hour circling and shooting up the police station.”110 The 1927 cleanup of the Laredo station reflected the limits of Border Patrol disorganization that allowed for local management of immigration law enforcement. Although most local stations developed their own strategies, policies, and procedures, the Laredo station was exempt until the men and the infamously brutal racial violence of the Texas Rangers slashed away at the bonds between the Laredo Border Patrol and local Mexican-American leadership. The cleanup transformed the Laredo Border Patrol into a refuge for white violence within Mexican-dominated Laredo. One of the men who found sanctuary in the U.S. Border Patrol was Harlon B. Carter.
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