Photo By Jennifer Archdekin | Sitting atop a mustang named Donkey, Staff Sgt. Jefferson Bailey patrols an area of...... read more read more
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – One weekend a month he’s a citizen-soldier in Missouri, the rest of the time he’s a modern day cowboy patrolling our nation’s borders in Texas. Meet Staff Sgt. Jefferson Bailey, of Sierra Blanca, Texas, who serves as a U.S. Border Patrol agent on horseback.
For nearly four years, Bailey has been splitting his time between the Lonestar State and the Show-Me State.
As a Soldier, Bailey serves with the 1141st Engineer Company (Sapper) in Kansas City. Upon graduating Lone Jack High School in 2000, Bailey went straight into the Missouri Army National Guard. Over the past 13 years he has deployed to Iraq three times, in 2004, 2006 and 2008, as a combat engineer.
“During my third tour in Iraq I applied for a job with the patrol,” said Bailey. “It’s a long hiring process.”
In July 2009 Bailey started with the border patrol at the Sierra Blanca Station. He helps cover about 2,500 square miles and is responsible for 73 border miles between the U.S. and Mexico while on horseback.
“You work the area looking for undocumented aliens and illicit activity,” said Bailey. “We are out there looking for signs of entry, signs of crossing, and then we track the groups. We have a large area around the town.”
There are a lot of similarities between Bailey’s careers, especially when comparing his deployments to his day job.
“With the border patrol you have to be able to think on your feet and I picked up a lot of that in Iraq,” said Bailey. “The job of driving around along the border looking for footprints is a lot like driving around in Iraq looking for bombs. It’s slow and it’s looking for any change. It’s a skill that I use still.”
It’s apparent that dangers exist in both vocations, especially while he was in Iraq.
“Usually it goes pretty smooth, the way you expect it to,” said Bailey. “I never thought about how dangerous it was until after the fact. You’re always ready for things to go south. You’ll have weeks where you’re chasing two groups a night and then you’ll have a month with not much activity or they get by us. It’s a different world down there.”
Traveling between Missouri and Texas is not just an inconvenience Bailey has to endure until his commitment to the Guard has been fulfilled—it’s by choice. Bailey just reenlisted for another six years and has seven years to go before he’s eligible for retirement.
“I’ve been overseas with these guys,” said Bailey. “I’ve known these guys forever, since I’ve been in the Guard. So, I stick around here and fly back every month. Those people you go with, they are your brothers.”
Bailey said the most attractive thing about his job as a border agent is being able to be in the field, out in the desert and surrounded by mountains.
“Sometimes you get out there and you’re on a horse and you’re in the desert and you see mountains and that’s all you see,” said Bailey. “You could think that you could be in a different time.”
| Date Taken: | 03.04.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 03.04.2013 13:19 |
| Story ID: | 102874 |
| Location: | KANSAS CITY, MO, US |
| Web Views: | 95 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Missouri Guardsman serves as a modern-day cowboy, by Jennifer Archdekin, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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