Posted Jun 25, 2019, 2:46 pm
While Border Patrol agents deal with an influx of asylum seekers, mostly families from Central America and Mexico, the White House is again rearranging the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security.
On Tuesday, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, John P. Sanders, told agency employees that he was leaving effective Friday, July 5. Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed the announcement.
President Donald Trump is preparing to replace Sanders with Mark Morgan, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Washington Post reported.
"Although I will leave it to you to determine whether I was successful, I can unequivocally say that helping support the amazing men and women of CBP has been the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunity of my career," Sanders wrote in a message to agency employees.
In April, the White House engaged in what one DHS official called a "near-systematic purge" at DHS, beginning with the ousting of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in early-April.
With Sanders' resignation and Morgan's shift, all of the border security and immigration positions that require a Senate confirmation have been left with an acting leader. And, all told, a dozen leadership positions at DHS are either vacant or have an acting head.
That includes:
Asked who was in charge now, one staffer for a DHS agency said Tuesday, "Hell if I know."
Like what you're reading? Support high-quality local journalism and help underwrite independent news without the spin.
Meanwhile CBP struggles to manage the continued influx of asylum seekers from Central America and Mexico, mostly families traveling with children, or children traveling with guardians or siblings.
In May, Border Patrol agents took into custody nearly 133,000 people, including more than 84,000 people traveling either as families or unaccompanied children. This was the largest number of monthly detentions in more than a decade, and comes after more than a decade of declining number of people detained along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Last week, a group of lawyers inspected a Border Patrol facility near McAllen, Texas, as part of the Flores Settlement, a lawsuit that began in 1997 over the treatment of children in immigration custody, and found that migrants, including young children, were living in squalid conditions.
"Basic hygiene just doesn't exist there," said Toby Gialluca, one of the lawyers who interviewed children at the detention center. "It’s a health crisis ... a manufactured health crisis," she said.
On Monday, officials announced suddenly moved hundreds of children from the facility in Clint, Texas, to a Border Patrol station near El Paso, following reports that the children had spent nearly a month living with substandard food, water and sanitation.
Sanders' resignation comes just 71 days after he was tapped for the position by former commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who left CBP to become the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to replace Nielsen.
Along with Nielsen, the White House also forced out Ronald Vitiello, the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Nielsen's deputy director Claire Grady, and Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Ailes. Vitiello also served as the deputy commissioner for CBP from April 2017 to July 2018 before he was shifted to ICE to replace Thomas Homan, who served as acting head of the agency throughout 2017 until he decided to retire.
Homan may return to immigration enforcement as a border "czar."
"The failed leadership by this administration, the instability of DHS senior personnel, the constant shake-ups to border strategy and inhumane polices have all contributed to the crisis and mismanagement at our southern border," said U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. "We need real leadership at the border not acting political directors," she said.
Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, which is currently engaged in lawsuit over the use of Defense Department funding to build border barriers along the border, including three wildlife refugees in Arizona, said in a statement that the commissioner's resignation is a "critical moment" that "stresses the need for continued public pressure in calling on the Trump administration to reverse its course on this anti-immigrant agenda, stop its inhumane treatment of migrant families, and abandon its dangerous push for a border wall."
Support TucsonSentinel.com today, because a smarter Tucson is a better Tucson.
Brune called CBP "out-of-control and problematic," and that Sierra Club members and volunteers working and living along the border have seen "first-hand the growing and unchecked cruelty," of CBP officials. "Border communities have experienced racist targeting by agents, damage from border wall construction and unjustified militarization in the places they call home," he said.
Sanders was the third CBP commissioner under the Trump administration after R. Gil Kerlikowske, an Obama-era appointee, resigned in Jan. 2017, and was followed by McAleenan.
Morgan was also an Obama-era official, but was ousted from his position as chief of the Border Patrol in 2017 by the Trump administration, through Morgan used a series of cable news appearances to catapult himself back into DHS to become the acting head of ICE.
Correction: This story was updated to better describe Cuccinelli’s status at USCIS.
Comments
There are no comments on this report. Sorry, comments are closed.