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-Short Attention Span Theater-

US Border Patrol chief Michael Banks resigns

2026-05-15

[BBC] The chief of US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has announced that he is resigning, telling Fox News that his departure is effective immediately.

Michael Banks had been in the role since US President Donald Trump's return to the White House last year.

His departure is the latest shakeup for the Trump administration's immigration policy team, after the president fired his secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this year, and outspoken CBP commander Greg Bovino quit before that.

Paywalled.
MSN-Times of San Diego adds:

Michael Banks’ decision, announced in a Fox News interview and later confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, is the latest leadership shake-up of officials implementing President Donald Trump

...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to its centerpiece policy of mass deportations.

"It’s just time," Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website, which said the resignation was effective immediately. "I feel like I got the ship back on course," he said, referring to what he described as previous chaos at the southern border. Banks said it was "time to enjoy the family and life."

Many on President Trump’s team, like Elon Musk and the DOGE group, volunteered — and took a significant pay cut, in many cases — to lend their skills for the short term to turn around the executive branch rather than the next step of a government career. In Mr. Banks case, after ten years in the Navy’s military police, he spent 23 years in the US Border Patrol, resigning in disgust because of the Biden-Harris Politburo’s border policies, upon which Governor Abbot snatched him up to be Texas Border Czar for the next two years. But last month the Washington Examiner reported that half a dozen current and former BP agents accused him of taking s3x vacations in Columbia and Thailand, where such things are legal. While several investigations went nowhere, Mr. Banks is now stepping down, so who knows?

In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service "during one of the most challenging periods for border security."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was not clear who will replace Banks. He led an agency at the forefront of Trump’s high-profile immigration enforcement efforts but kept a lower profile than some other officials such as Gregory Bovino, a now-retired commander who became a public face of the immigration crackdown.

BORDER PATROL PARTICIPATED IN IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT OPERATION IN U.S. CITIES
CBP is one of the federal agencies that participated since last year in a series of immigration enforcement operations, carried out primarily in cities governed by Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
— an effort that triggered a spike in arrests and led to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this year at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Banks’ resignation takes place two months after Markwayne Mullin, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma, became homeland security secretary. DHS oversees CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE.

Banks is stepping down at the same time that ICE is also going through a leadership transition. Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, is leaving later this month and will be replaced by David Venturella, who worked for years for private contractors before returning to government service.

CBP was established in 2003 and handles customs, immigration, and agricultural regulations to secure U.S. borders. It has a workforce of over 20,000 agents assigned to patrol the more than 6,000 miles of land borders, and an operating budget of $1.4 billion, according to information from its website.

As head of CBP, Banks became a pivotal figure in the Trump administration’s hardline policy to reconfigure immigration law enforcement in the United States. He oversaw the expansion of prosecutions for illegal border crossings, intensified coordination between the Border Patrol and ICE, and supervised the implementation of broader internal enforcement operations within the country’s borders.

Posted by:Skidmark

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