History
The U.S. Border Patrol in Florida has a long history of stations in the Florida Keys and Monroe County area. There have been as many as three Border Patrol Stations in Monroe County; the last station was closed in 1994. Since then, continued smuggling into the Keys and extended details of agents into that area of operations justified a renewed permanent Border Patrol presence in the area.

In 2001, a permanent Border Patrol presence was reestablished in the Florida Keys with a contingency of agents assigned to work out of the HIDTA building in Marathon. In 2003, the Marathon Station officially existed as its own station, until then, the Marathon Station was a sub-station of the Pembroke Pines Border Patrol Station. A new Border Patrol Station is presently under construction in Marathon and is on schedule to be complete in May of 2007.

Area of Responsibility
The Marathon Border Patrol Station’s area of operations consists of all of Monroe County with a total land area of 997 square miles. This is Florida’s southern most county, which includes all of the Florida Keys to the southwest, and portions of the Florida Everglades to the northwest. At the southern end of the peninsula is the Florida Keys, a chain of small islands or keys, spanning over 220 miles, curving southwestward from Biscayne Bay to the Dry Tortugas at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. The main chain and inhabited portions of the Keys run from Key Largo in the north to Key West in the south, and spans approximately 120 miles. The keys are made up of over 800 islands, approximately 40 of which are inhabited. The highest point in the keys is on Windley Key at 18 feet above sea level. The Keys are connected to the mainland of Florida by one road, U.S. Highway 1 (also called the Overseas Highway), which consist of approximately 45 bridges totaling 19.3 miles, the longest being the "Seven Mile" bridge.