Malta Station Celebrates 100 Years for U.S. Border Patrol

As the U.S Border Patrol celebrates 100 years of operations (officially on Monday, May 20), the Malta Border Patrol Station held their celebration on Friday, June 7.

About 70 showed up for the event.

"Today we are going to give station tours," Malta Station's Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge Scott Marino told the PCN. "We invited a bunch of stakeholders from the local community, ranchers, the City Council, and people we work with up by the border."

The event served as a way to thank those who have supported the Malta station.

"They've done an awesome job," Marino said. "I know that the ranchers have pulled us out when we get stuck in bad spots up there, so we appreciate that and we wanted to show a little appreciation."

One of the biggest hits, primarily amongst the youth present was the VirTra Simulated Training, a 360 degree immersive training tool that the station uses. The program was ran by Malta Agent Adam Young.

The simulator helps in De-Escalation and Active Threat training, through a variation of modes, that includes anything from hunting simulation, active shooter drills, and zombie scenarios. That day, it was only used for de-escalation training.

"It's pretty impressive," Marino said of VirTra.

One of the stops on the tour was the Detention and Processing Room, which does not hold many refugees or potentially illegal foreign nationals, but the room serves a very important task, crucial to protecting the southern border of the U.S.

"We use this right now primarily for virtual processing to help process the apprehensions on the southern border," Marino said.

The room has a few cells as well as a computer station for the aforementioned processing. The last time that a holding cell was used was in February.

In addition, the tour included a look at some of the tools that the station can use for crowd control.

"We showed a lot of devices that we have," Marino said. "A lot of them were recently trained on when they are going to install the pipeline here because they were expecting some protests. A lot of those devices were specific to that mission and kind of an anti-protest to keep things under control and calm."

Marino said that the devices were all less lethal devices.

One of the more physical stops was the Use of Force Demonstration, where local youths were able to practice the use of force on one of the Agents that instructs how to properly immobilize an assailant through the use of less lethal and lethal force.

Plenty of burgers were prepared and served by Patrol Agent Joshua Newman. The spread included chips, various homemade desserts, and a 100-year cake for the US Border Patrol.

Several agents were in attendance, including local agents as well as Patrol Agent in Charge Mike Rappold Havre station and Border Patrol Agent-Resident Agent Bradley Kalk who is the Harlem Resident Agent.

As of now, Malta's station covers from Turner's Port of Entry to McEachron Road just north of Hinsdale.

Malta's station is home to about just under 20 agents, and the station is currently trying to recruit.

"Anyone that is interested and wants to join, please reach out, stop by the station, we can definitely get that process going," Marino said. "It's a really good job."