US border agency leader being forced out of office
WASHINGTON – The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being forced out of his job leading the nation’s largest law enforcement agency as the number of illegal crossings rose to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Chris Magnus, who has been commissioner less than a year, was told to resign or be fired, according to two people who were briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
It is part of a larger shakeup expected at Homeland Security as officials struggle to manage migrants coming from a wider range of countries, including Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Migrants were stopped 2.38 million times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 37% 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 Donald Trump’s presidency, in 2019.
Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, confirmed that Magnus was being pushed out.
The Los Angeles Times was first to report on the ultimatum. In a statement to the newspaper, Magnus said he was asked by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to step down or be fired.
He said he wouldn’t step down and defended his record.
Customs and Border Protection and the Homeland Security Department did not respond to comment requests.
The shakeup comes as Republicans are likely to take control of the House in January and were expected to launch investigations into the border. The Republicans insist that Biden’s policies have not worked.
While Trump-era asylum restrictions encourage repeat attempts, flows have been extraordinarily high by any measure. The numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in more countries, relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of asylum restrictions.
The Biden administration agreed with Western hemisphere leaders in June to work together more on hosting migrants who flee their countries. Last month, Mexico began taking back Venezuelans who entered the U.S. 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,” 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, Magnus was an outsider. As the police chief in 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.
The National Border Patrol Council has been more muted in its criticism of Magnus than of Mayorkas but Judd, the union president, said he welcomed Magnus’ departure.