Biden’s Top US Border Chief Reportedly Told to Quit After 'Deadliest' Year of Raging Migrant Crisis

As the boundary between the US and Mexico witnessed a record influx of illegal asylum-seekers throughout the 2022 fiscal year, with harrowing statistics of deaths among those attempting the unauthorized crossings, Republicans took President Joe Biden to task for his failure to resolve the migrant crisis.

President Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner, Chris Magnus, has reportedly been told to quit because of the overwhelming influx of migrants at the southern border.

After Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Magnus to resign voluntarily or expect to be fired, the CBP boss allegedly refused to comply, sources were cited by media outlets as saying.

As the scandal worsened, several CBP executive assistant commissioners supposedly raised a hue and cry, saying they would quit unless Magnus left. The stalwart border chief’s duties and responsibilities have since been delegated to his deputy secretary, John Tien, with deputy CBP commissioner Troy Miller in charge of daily operations, according to reports.

'Backlog of Bodies'

The chaos within the agency is believed to reflect the degree of internal friction within the Biden administration's ranks, as the festering US border crisis remains unresolved. Unauthorized migration at the southern border has soared to new highs this year, with overwhelmed immigration enforcement agents struggling to staunch the flow of illegal arrivals. Furthermore, the 2022 fiscal year has also been a highly deadly one, with makeshift mortuaries in a Texas town along the southern border described as facing a “backlog of bodies.” More than 800 migrants are believed to have died of various causes while trying to sneak into the US.

Over 1.7 million migrant encounters were registered in 2021, and more than two million in 2022, figures released in September showed. Reports citing the country’s Border Patrol say the US-Mexico border witnessed three times the number of migrant encounters under Biden than it experienced under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

From the outset, Biden was adamant about undoing many of Trump's immigration policies, purportedly to offer increased protection and care for asylum seekers and migrants. However, the dismal result of his approach turned the US-Mexico border into a festering crisis.

Republicans have blamed Biden for the border chaos, and denounced the current administration’s “open border policies” along with the scrapping of a number of the restrictive measures against illegal migrants that were in place before. Despite dogged insistence that he would undo "everything former President Donald Trump had done" regarding immigration, Biden has been forced to reinstate the 45th president's Remain In Mexico program. He also upheld a policy known as Title 42, used during the pandemic to preemptively remove migrants found at the border after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the administration from ditching the COVID-19 era health order.