Mark Morgan to replace John Sanders as border chief as DHS shake-up continues
A week after beginning his reelection campaign with promises of mass deportations, President Trump sent the agencies responsible for immigration enforcement deeper into disarray on Tuesday, replacing his interim border chief with a figure he plucked from cable news punditry last month.
Mark Morgan, who Trump installed as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early June, will take over as acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, replacing John Sanders, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials and a legislative staffer briefed on the move.
Trump ran for president promising a sweeping immigration crackdown and a monumental border wall, but he has presided over the worst migration crisis in at least a decade while dizzyingly hiring and firing DHS officials. The shake-up Tuesday comes after weeks of interagency squabbles and political knifings among agency officials who are struggling to cope with a record surge of migrant families and squalid conditions inside U.S. Border Patrol detention cells stuffed beyond capacity.
Since April, the president has purged nearly all of the top officials remaining at DHS from the beginning of his term, leaving every immigration-related U.S. agency with an interim leader. Trump has said that he is seeking greater “toughness†from his border enforcers, bringing in figures who issue bold pronouncements on television but lack formal nominations and ways to deliver on Trump’s promises for “millions†of deportations and an ironclad border.
Immigration hard-liners in recent days have been pushing Trump to remove acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan at the moment when the policies McAleenan has advanced — including a deal with Mexico for an unprecedented immigration crackdown there — are beginning to yield results.
A week after beginning his reelection campaign with promises of mass deportations, President Trump sent the agencies responsible for immigration enforcement deeper into disarray on Tuesday, replacing his interim border chief with a figure he plucked from cable news punditry last month.
Mark Morgan, who Trump installed as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early June, will take over as acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, replacing John Sanders, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials and a legislative staffer briefed on the move.
Trump ran for president promising a sweeping immigration crackdown and a monumental border wall, but he has presided over the worst migration crisis in at least a decade while dizzyingly hiring and firing DHS officials. The shake-up Tuesday comes after weeks of interagency squabbles and political knifings among agency officials who are struggling to cope with a record surge of migrant families and squalid conditions inside U.S. Border Patrol detention cells stuffed beyond capacity.
Since April, the president has purged nearly all of the top officials remaining at DHS from the beginning of his term, leaving every immigration-related U.S. agency with an interim leader. Trump has said that he is seeking greater “toughness†from his border enforcers, bringing in figures who issue bold pronouncements on television but lack formal nominations and ways to deliver on Trump’s promises for “millions†of deportations and an ironclad border.
Immigration hard-liners in recent days have been pushing Trump to remove acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan at the moment when the policies McAleenan has advanced — including a deal with Mexico for an unprecedented immigration crackdown there — are beginning to yield results.
One person who has spoken with Trump about immigration said the president has heard from senior immigration adviser Stephen Miller and others around him that “everyone at DHS is weak.â€
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