Chris Magnus has declined to quit after bosses told him to resign or be fired amid an immigration crisis
Chris Magnus is shown testifying in his October 2021 Senate confirmation hearing in Washington. © Getty Images / Rod Lamkey
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief Chris Magnus has reportedly refused an order by higher-ups in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to resign or face being fired directly by President Joe Biden amid the nation’s worst border crisis on record.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his deputy, John Tien, told Magnus to quit his post because they no longer had confidence in his ability to do his job overseeing the largest US law enforcement agency, the CBP commissioner told senior staffers in a letter on Friday. “I have no plans to resign,” he said, adding that he intends to show up to work on Monday.
However, Magnus acknowledged that DHS had already cut off his access to his official government Twitter account. He told the Los Angeles Times that he stood by his record of reforming how CBP operates. “I am excited about the progress I made and look forward to continuing that work.”
More than 5.5 million illegal aliens have been encountered by CBP agents at US borders since Biden took office in January 2021. There were a record 2.2 million apprehensions at the US-Mexico border in the federal government’s 2022 fiscal year, ended on September 30, exceeding the combined totals for the preceding four years under Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. The border crisis has been blamed for surging inflows of fentanyl, a drug that caused nearly 108,000 US overdose deaths in 2021.
“Both Chris Magnus and his boss, Secretary Mayorkas, should resign,” US Representative Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, said on Friday. “They are failing at the Department of Homeland Security’s most basic mission. Our border is wide open.”
Magnus would be the first political appointee to be fired by Biden if the president follows through on his dismissal. Biden picked Magnus to lead the CBP, making him the agency’s first openly gay commissioner, and he was confirmed by the Senate last December. Magnus, 62, has worked for over 30 years in law enforcement. He offered to quit as police chief of Tucson, Arizona, in 2020, after a man died in custody, but his resignation was declined.
