President Biden will nominate Chris Magnus, Tucson’s Chief of Police, Ariz., And a critic of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policy to lead Customs and Border Protection, one of six new divisions of leadership at the Department of the Interior. Safety.
If he is confirmed, Mr. Magnus will be a politically challenging challenge facing the Biden government: how to deal with a record number of border crossings that are expected to increase in the coming months. The government has managed to move thousands of children and teens safely from the Border Patrol-run prisons to shelters throughout the United States.
Members of Congress called for additional accountability measures at Customs and Border Protection after it came to light in 2019 that dozens of border agents joined private Facebook groups and other social media pages carrying obscene images of Spanish lawmakers and threats to members of include Congress. DHS has also investigated the Office of the Inspector General for its aggressive tactics against protesters in Portland, Ore.
Mr. Biden, who is campaigning for the increasing oversight of Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, did not choose a veteran of the agency, but rather a progressive police chief who used police efforts while overseeing held over departments in Tucson and Richmond, California. According to a White House official, Biden was forced to choose him because of efforts to reform departments, as well as his recent work to police a city near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mr. Magnus, who is white and gay, received national attention when a photo of him in uniform with a Black Lives Matter sign went viral during a rally in Richmond. It also drew criticism from the local police union. Last June, he suddenly offered to resign as chief of Tucson police while releasing a video in which a 27-year-old man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, was killed in custody. Mayor Regina Romero has confidence in Mr. Magnus exclaimed and kept him at work.
He also publicly criticized the immigration policies of President Donald J. Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, because they hampered the police’s efforts to curb crime.
“The harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mr. Sessions’ reckless policies ignore a basic reality that most good police and prosecutors know,” Magnus wrote in a New York Times opinion piece in 2017. “If people are afraid of the police , if they fear that they may be separated or severely questioned from their families on the basis of their immigration status; they will not report crimes or come forward as witnesses. ”
Mr. Last year, Magnus also refused to accept the “Stonegarden” grants for homeland security issued to local police departments that help the federal government maintain the border, after the Trump administration refused to donate a portion of the money spent on humanitarian aid for asylum. looking for migrants.
The nominations released on Monday also include top cyber security officials, a sign of the government’s intention to prioritize cyber attacks as a top threat to national security. Jen Easterly, Morgan Stanley’s head of resilience and a former senior official at the National Security Agency, has been appointed to head the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber security branch, and Robert Silvers, a top cyber security officer at the department during the Obama administration. government, was elected to be under Secretary of Policy.
Mr. Biden will also nominate Jonathan Meyer, another Obama administration official, to return to the department as chief executive, and John Tien, the former senior director of the National Security Council for Afghanistan and Pakistan, to serve as deputy secretary .
Ur Jaddou, who worked as chief adviser at Citizenship and Immigration Services before leading an immigration advocacy group, was appointed to lead the immigration agency.
The officials will work under Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the first immigrant to run the department responsible not only for border security and immigration policy, but also to provide a coordinated defense against terrorism, maritime, aviation and cyber security threats. During the Trump administration, the department was riddled with vacancies and interim leaders and is accused of focusing unilaterally on the border with Mexico, whether it separates children from their parents or builds a wall there.
The government has still not nominated anyone to lead immigration and customs enforcement, the agency investigating sex and drug trafficking organizations and deporting undocumented immigrants.