Chris Magnus, the Biden administration’s commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), was reportedly forced out of his job as part of a large personnel shakeup at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a government source.
The source said that Magnus resisted leaving his position after being told by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or get fired.
Magnus, whom President Joe Biden nominated in April 2021 to lead the CBP, previously came under fire within the White House for being unengaged in his job.
“He’s not in the game,” an administration official told Politico of Magnus. “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 fuck is that about?’”
The law enforcement professional defended his tenure at CBP in an October statement.
“I care a great deal about CBP and the people who work here. In the 10 months I’ve been CBP’s Commissioner, I’ve gotten up to speed on the agency’s many complex areas of responsibility,” Magnus stated. “While CBP is an operational — not a policy-making — agency, I’ve been closely involved in the major DHS immigration, border security, trade, and other policy discussions throughout my time as Commissioner. I frequently share insights from CBP’s frontline law enforcement and civilian personnel in those discussions and will continue to do so.”
Fox News also reported in October 2021 that Magnus settled a sexual harassment and retaliation case from a former officer in 2017, which stemmed from his time as a police chief in Richmond, California.
The U.S. has been seeing massive migrant numbers since the Biden administration announced in April that it would be lifting “Title 42,” a controversial border policy implemented by former President Donald Trump back in March 2020 that allowed the border agency to turn migrants away.
Since then, the DHS has reported that nearly 2.4 million migrants were detained at the border for the fiscal year ending in September, breaching the already-historic 1.7 million migrant detainees last year.
