Top US border official quits after first refusing request to step down
Though he had said he did not intend to quit, the leader of the US agency in charge of patrolling the nation’s borders resigned over the weekend, according to the Joe Biden White House.
Chris Magnus had been asked to step down by Biden’s homeland security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, amid a surge in migrant crossings at the US border with Mexico. Magnus – who was told he would be fired if he didn’t leave on his own – responded by publicly stating that he had “no plans to resign” as the commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“I didn’t take this job as a résumé builder,” Magnus’s statement said. “I came to Washington DC – moved my family here – because I care about this agency, its mission and the goals of [the Biden] administration.”
But late on Saturday, shortly before prominent media outlets projected that Biden’s Democratic party had clinched control of the US Senate after the congressional midterm elections earlier in the week, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said the president had accepted Magnus’s resignation.
Jean-Pierre said Biden also thanked Magnus for his nearly 40-year career in public service, which included being police chief open to reforms in three US cities, including Tucson, Arizona, and Richmond, California.
Biden nominated Magnus to take charge of the CBP in April 2021, and in December he was sworn in. In less than a year of office, he drew unwanted attention from Biden as border patrol agents encountered record numbers of migrants crossing into the US from Mexico.
Agents stopped migrants at the USMexico border 2.38m times in the fiscal year which ended 30 September, an uptick of 37% from the previous 12 months. For the first time, that annual total exceeded 2m in August and is more than twice the highest level in 2019 during Donald Trump’s presidency.
As first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Magnus’s decision to discontinue a retention bonus for the border patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, earned him a meeting with Mayorkas on 9 November. Magnus and Ortiz had bickered over proposed agency reforms.
The Times also reported that Mayorkas was displeased that Magnus had disobeyed an instruction to not attend a meeting of border patrol chiefs.
During that meeting, Mayorkas encouraged Magnus to step down, according to the Times.
Biden chose Magnus as CBP commissioner after the ousted official criticized the Trump White House’s tightening of restrictions against migrants as negatively affecting relations between law enforcement and communities of immigrants.
The Associated Press reported that Magnus’s removal was part of a larger anticipated homeland security shakeup amid the agency’s struggles to manage migrants coming from a wider array of nations such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venzuela.
That shake-up would come as Republicans are projected to take a slim majority in the US House of Representatives after last week’s midterm elections, positioning them to launch investigations into the USMexico border.