Biden and Mayorkas can’t escape blame for migrant crisis by scapegoating their border czar

By Andrew R. Arthur on November 14, 2022

Chris Magnus, President Joe Biden’s border chief, resigned Saturday, ending a standoff with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who’d threatened to fire Magnus if he didn’t step down. It’s unclear whether the US Customs and Border Protection commissioner’s resignation is a simple personnel matter or represents a shift in White House immigration policy — but the administration is likely looking for a scapegoat for the humanitarian disaster at the southwest border it helped create.

Biden inherited what Rodney Scott, his first Border Patrol chief, described last September as “arguably the most effective border security in” US history, but he quickly allowed it to “disintegrate” as “inexperienced political appointees” ignored “common sense border security recommendations from experienced career professionals.”

Few Biden appointees had less experience than Magnus, whose career was largely spent in the upper Midwest and San Francisco Bay area. Though he did serve as Tucson, Ariz., police chief for five years before the White House tapped him to head CBP, his accomplishments there largely consisted of implementing “progressive” policies.

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Read the full op-ed at the New York Post.