Amid a record-breaking influx of illegal immigrants into the United States, four more of President Joe Biden’s top border officials have quietly resigned in just the past two weeks.
That brings the total to seven in recent months, along with speculation about the reasons for their departure.
The latest came just this week from the deputy secretary of Homeland Security John Tien, who announced he was leaving only a year after his appointment.
Tien, a highly decorated U.S. Army veteran who served as director of the National Security Council under the Obama and Bush administrations, said he was leaving to spend more time with his family in Georgia.
Ira Mehlman, a senior spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told The Epoch Times that Tien’s explanation “ranks right up there with my dog eating my homework.”
“There comes a time when you have to look yourself in the mirror and say I just can’t do this anymore,” he said.
Mehlman said he was referring to what he described as absolute chaos spreading through the United States under Biden’s “open border” policy.
On June 22, his organization, which tracks the impact of illegal immigration on the United States, released the results of a report showing that illegal immigrants cost taxpayers $163 billion.
The group also reported that the population of illegal immigrants living in the United States has reached 16.8 million.
“That’s more than the population of 46 out of 50 states,” Texas Congressman Troy Nehls posted on Twitter in response to the FAIR report.
Mehlman said FAIR’s advocacy office is hearing from more and more Americans who have complained they are losing housing and job opportunities to the mass of illegal border-crossers.
Towns far from border states are also feeling the impact.
This week in Unity, Maine—a rural, nearly all-white college town with about 2,000 inhabitants and a median annual income of a little under $27,000—the residents were upset to learn they were inheriting about 600 illegal immigrants from Portland, a self-appointed sanctuary city.
There is also major unrest among frontline workers at the border.
Out of the 9,300 border agents that responded to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) survey, one-quarter of them indicated plans to quit their jobs in the near future, according to its recently released results.
Some have also accused the Biden administration of silencing whistleblowers on controversial issues such as reports of thousands of missing migrant children.
The chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) recently said at a hearing that Homeland Security’s Inspector General officials involved in an investigation into border activity have reported feeling intimidated over speaking up.
Grothman entitled the June 6 hearing “Help Wanted: Law Enforcement Staffing Challenges at the Border.”
Even more signs of unrest came on May 31, when 18 states filed a federal complaint against the Biden administration for its new “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” policy, which is supported by a controversial phone app that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody says allows “aliens to schedule their entry into the United States” and bypass vetting and safety protocols.
The same day the state complaint was filed, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz announced he was resigning.
A few days later, Tae Johnson—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting chief—handed in his resignation.
Then came DHS' Acting Deputy Commissioner Benjamine Huffman’s announced retirement on June 9 after serving only years on the job.
Their departure follows Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus’s controversial departure in November.
Magnus stepped down after reports that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas threatened to fire him if he did not. It has never been disclosed why Mayorkas wanted Magnus off the job.
Like Tien, Magnus was only on the job for a year.
Ortiz’s resigned after his blistering testimony in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security in March that contradicted Mayorkas’s claim that the borders were secure. He also testified that far more illegal aliens were evading border agents than Mayorkas had reported.
In response to Ortiz’s resignation, House Homeland Security Border Security Subcommittee Chairman Congressman Clay Higgins (R-La.) accused Mayorkas of getting rid of border officials standing in the way of turning America into a “third world country.”
“It was clear that his dedication to actual enforcement of our law did not fit well with the Mayorkas/cartel agenda to flood America with illegals and drugs,“ said Higgins, ”Chief Ortiz was an American patriot who dared to speak the truth about Secretary Mayorkas.”
Nicolette Grazer, an immigration attorney out of Los Angeles, told The Epoch Times, that she immediately knew the exits were “political.”
She pointed to the lack of changeover in the immigration court system where judges and attorneys are struggling with a policy she said was, “no doubt taxing the conscience” of top border officials.
Grazer, who has been helping illegal immigrants achieve U.S. citizenship for 23 years, said that the imbalances in Biden’s immigration policies are so extreme that it is keeping migrants with job skills out while allowing unvetted migrants through.
She said the same goes for those who already have a place to stay in the United States because they are trying to unite with families who are well-settled in the countries.
In some cases, it has taken more than four years to process applications of relatives of naturalized U.S. citizens, according to Grazer.
“Right now, we really have a very backward approach,” she said.
Other top border officials to go include CBP’s Chief of the Law Enforcement Operations Directorate Brian Hastings.
Hastings, who routinely spoke publicly about what he deemed a “crisis at the border” was quietly replaced by El Paso, Texas, chief patrol agent Gloria Chavez, after being on the job for two years.
Tony Barker, U.S. Border Patrol’s acting chief of law enforcement operations directorate, left his job in January over allegations of sexual harassment made against him by female staff workers.
So far, the only statement from the Biden administration on the mass exodus of its top border officials came from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Troy Miller who thanked the existing senior border leaders for their service.
“I am very grateful for the service of our departing senior leaders, and look forward to what our new executives will accomplish in service of our mission to safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values,” Miller said in a June 9 statement.
Mehlman said he has no doubt that the outgoing border officials are all being replaced with “yes men.”
“If you can’t fix it, maybe we can hide it,” said Mehlman, “that seems to be the policy of the Biden administration.”
