Biden to Border Patrol Boss: Quit or Be Fired
A dust-up is said to be part of a larger shakeup expected at homeland security as it struggles to deal with the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden administration is asked the man charged with securing America’s borders to resign or be fired, but the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reportedly refused the first option.
Chris Magnus, who has been on the job for less than a year, said Friday that the homeland security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, requested that he resign or face firing earlier in the week but Mr. Magnus declined to do so, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
“I expressed to him that I felt there was no justification for me to resign when I still cared deeply about the work I was doing and felt that that work was focused on the things I was hired to do in the first place,” Mr. Magnus told the Times.
The dust-up is said to be part of a larger shakeup expected at homeland security as it struggles to deal with the ongoing crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border.
If Republicans take control of Congress in January, they have made it clear that they intend to launch a series of investigations into conditions that have led to the largest influx of asylum-seeking migrants in the nation’s history.
Migrants were stopped 2.38 million times at the Mexican border in the fiscal year that ended September 30, up 37 percent from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during President Trump’s tenure.
The numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, the relative strength of the American economy, and uneven enforcement of asylum restrictions that carry no legal consequences for those crossing the border without visas.
The president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union that represents agents of the Border Patrol, Brandon Judd, confirmed that Mr. Magnus was in the process of being pushed out. Neither Customs and Border Protection nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment by the Associated Press.
The Biden administration in June agreed with other western hemisphere leaders to work together more on hosting migrants who flee their countries. Last month, Mexico began taking back an undetermined number of Venezuelans who entered the United States illegally, but measures so far have failed to produce major change.
“There have always been periods of migrant surges into this country for different reasons, at different times,” Mr. Magnus told the Associated Press last year. “But I don’t think anybody disputes that the numbers are high right now and that we have to work as many different strategies as possible to deal with those high numbers.”
Despite decades in law enforcement, Mr. Magnus was something of an outsider before taking the position. As the police chief at Tucson, Arizona, he rejected federal grants to collaborate on border security with the agency he now leads and kept a distance from Border Patrol leaders in a region where thousands of agents are assigned.
Mr. Magnus rankled some rank-and-file agents — and delighted agency critics — with his announcement in May that he was revisiting guidelines for agents to pursue vehicles after a spate of fatal collisions.
In July, Mr. Magnus released the results of an investigation that said Border Patrol agents on horseback engaged in “unnecessary use of force” against Haitians at a camp at Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021. The investigation — which enraged rank-and-file members of the Border Patrol — also found the agents did not use their reins to whip the Haitians.
The National Border Patrol Council has been more muted in its criticism of Mr. Magnus than of Mr. Mayorkas, but Mr. Judd, the union president, said he would welcome Mr. Magnus’s departure.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Mr. Judd said. “He was just working on policies that were just going to incentivize more criminal activity. The vehicle-pursuit policy, had he implemented that, all it would have done is increase criminal activity.”
The Senate confirmed Mr. Magnus’s nomination in December by a 50-47 vote. Another critical homeland security agency — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has been without a Senate-confirmed leader for years.