The commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is being pressured to leave his position after presiding over record levels of illegal immigration.
Chris Magnus was put on notice that he must resign or be fired, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.
Magnus sent an email to employees on Friday saying he had no intention of resigning, the New York Times reported. Should Magnus refuse to resign, he would be the first Biden administration political appointee to be fired.
The Department of Homeland Security is supposedly recalibrating management and operations as migrants continue to flood across the border in record numbers, overwhelming personnel and government resources.
Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, confirmed to AP that Magnus was being forced out of his role.
Magnus originally told the Los Angeles Times that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanded he step down or be terminated. The official said he would refuse to willingly exit.
For the fiscal year ending in September, nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border, a 37 percent spike from last year, according to the latest DHS data. In September alone, there were nearly 230,000 migrant encounters on the southwest border.
Magnus’s career has faced some trials and scandals. For instance, in October 2021 he settled a sexual harassment and retaliation case leveled by a former officer in 2017 from his tenure as a police chief in California, Fox News noted. This past October, Politico reported accounts that Magnus was falling asleep during meetings and distracting from major agenda items for the agency.
“He’s not in the game,” an administration official said of the official. “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?’”