Retiring ICE chief says Biden admin should have acted ‘sooner’ to handle migrant surge
President Biden’s acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has called out the administration for its delay in taking action on the border crisis, saying he wishes the president had taken executive action earlier as the wave of migrants spiraled out of control.
Acting ICE Director Patrick “PJ” Lechleitner, who spent more than 20 years at the Department of Homeland Security, joined “FOX & Friends” to discuss their stance on Biden’s delayed action on the border, the challenges the agency has faced under his leadership and the obstacles agents will continue to face under Donald Trump.
“I run the agency, I execute. I’m implementing it, but I don’t know why they didn’t do it earlier,” he said. “I know it’s a long process. I would love to [have] seen earlier. I think it helped a lot. It really helped our mission, but I wanted to see it sooner.”
Biden announced the long-awaited actions of the executive branch in June 2024 to stop illegal immigrants at the southern border seeking asylum if the crossing reaches a certain level.
A presidential proclamation temporarily halted the entry of non-citizens across the southern border after the average number of border crossings exceeded 2,500 per day for seven days, officials said.
The Border Patrol retrieves a group of asylum seekers from a humanitarian camp at the U.S.-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona, U.S., Wednesday, March 13, 2024. During the first four months of fiscal year 2024, the Border Patrol recorded more than 250,000 apprehensions of migrants in the sector Tucson, Arizona, the most of all regions patrolled by the agency, according to federal government statistics, reports CBS. Photographer: Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Justin Hamel/Getty Images)
That remained in place for up to 14 days after a seven-day average of less than 1,500 encounters along the border. Officials argued that would make it easier for immigration officials to quickly remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States.
Despite this, encounters with illegal immigrants have reached historic proportions under the Biden administration, reaching 10.7 million according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
A SECURE BORDER SAVES LIVES, SAYS TOM HOMAN
The number of encounters with terrorist watch lists also increased by a staggering 3,500% under Biden’s leadership, as opposed to Trump’s.
Lechleitner, who is due to step down from his post on Friday, argued that as illegal immigration surged to record levels, it was stifling the agency’s ability to carry out its “core mission” as resources were diverted to the border.
“We’ve been pulled out of our core mission to assist CBP. We’re going to assist all the time when we do that at the border,” he said.
“We’ve also been pulled to help the Secret Service. We’ve had thousands of agents pulled from HSI to help the Secret Service. We have to because it’s a national security priority, but the Secret Service needs more money. Give them more money [to] doing their job the right way, giving more money to the border so CBP can actually do their job and lock it down a little bit better, but don’t keep distracting us from our core missions, which is the internal enforcement of these fugitive operations teams.”
Trump’s would-be border czar Thomas Homan speaks at the National Conservative Conference in Washington DC, Monday, July 8, 2024. (DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“We have almost 8 million people in the dock that we have to find now,” he continued. – It is a big challenge and our people are capable.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Lechleitner, who reiterated the nonpartisan nature of the law enforcement agency, sounded the alarm about the “smearing” of agents, who are simply there to enforce laws already in place.
“The new administration hasn’t even come in yet, and there’s already vandalism in some of our offices,” Lechleitner said. “They’re spraying… cancel ICE again and all that nonsense. We’re just doing our job. [a] disrespecting public servants, emergency services, and my heart goes out to the first responders that are in LA right now”
“It’s senseless that people vilify these first responders who take their lives in their own hands here, go out and support communities, and … people just ignore that and they … demonize and vilify us,” he continued.
Lechleitner urged all citizens who do not like the current policy to talk to their elected representatives.
Adam Shaw of Fox News contributed to this report.
