Tipsheet

Accountability or Scapegoating? Biden's Border Patrol Chief Forced to Resign

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 15, 2022 10:25 AM

In mid-October, Politico published a story about President Biden's Border Patrol chief, for whom the proverbial knives were clearly out.  Seeking a scapegoat for the administration's disastrous border crisis, the White House had apparently settled on its fall man.  Re-reading the details of that piece, it's hard to argue that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus should have even been selected for the job, or that he deserved to maintain his position.  The root cause of the crisis is not any one person's incompetence, but rather the inevitably wrong-headed failures of Biden's policies.  Until the underlying policy approach changes dramatically, the crisis will rage on.  But this man's 'leadership' wasn't helping matters:

Five current administration officials who work with CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus portrayed him as unengaged in his job, saying he often doesn’t attend White House meetings on the situation on the border, badmouths other agencies to colleagues and superiors, and has not built relationships within CBP and across other agencies to address the influx of migrants at the border. They complain he is unfamiliar with some of the operations of CBP and instead is focused primarily on reforming the culture of the Border Patrol, addressing its long list of allegations of racism and violence. Some of the officials believe Magnus hasn’t prioritized addressing the high number of migrants attempting to cross the border, but instead has continually tried to shift blame to other agencies. As an example, two of the five current administration officials said Magnus brought his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, pages of grievances about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He’s not in the game,” said another one of the administration officials. “Every time there’s a meeting and he’s in it, we’ll get to a conclusion and Magnus will have some sidebar issue that he wants to raise and we’re all like ‘What the [f***] is that about?’”...Six of those internal critics, for example, remarked to POLITICO that they had seen Magnus fall asleep during multiple meetings, including one earlier this year on how to handle the current swell of Venezuelans crossing the border. Magnus explained to POLITICO that he experienced brief periods of tiredness as a side effect of his multiple sclerosis, the neurological condition he was diagnosed with 15 years ago; and that he adjusted medication levels to deal with those side effects.

The White House (presumably) planted similar hit pieces against HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in recent months, but he ultimately wasn't as expendable as Magnus, probably for reasons of identity politics -- which is how the totally unqualified Becerra got the Health Secretary job in the first place, in the middle of a pandemic.  October's border crisis statistics were awful yet again, including more than 64,000 known got-aways that month alone.  It has become obvious that Team Biden was ready to throw Magnus overboard, with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issuing a public ultimatum: Resign or be fired.  Things escalated quickly last week:  

It's remarkable that Mayorkas is blaming anyone but himself and his boss for the mess they've created, but this is how politics work.  And over the weekend, largely lost in the post-election shuffle, Magnus fell on his sword:

The commissioner of Customs and Border Protection submitted his resignation on Saturday after a daylong standoff with his boss, the Homeland Security secretary, who just days earlier had demanded that he either step down or be fired. The White House issued a brief statement on Saturday evening acknowledging that President Biden had accepted the resignation of the commissioner, Chris Magnus, less than a year after appointing him to run one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the world. As commissioner, Mr. Magnus oversaw the United States’ international borders, a role that encompassed border management as well as customs and trade. The Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, has not publicly explained why he insisted that Mr. Magnus step down so urgently, and there have been no allegations of wrongdoing. The Biden administration has faced record-breaking illegal border crossings and struggled internally over how to deal with the challenge...

This is a thimble of accountability, though the chief arsonists remain firmly in place.  Magnus may be gone, but the chaos and dysfunction being wrought by Biden policies continue apace:

All of those updates were posted after last week's elections, in which Democrats who've rubber stamped this crisis were largely re-elected.  And on and on it goes, worse than ever:

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