Here We Go Again
Mark Morgan’s only been with the Trump Administration for about six weeks now, but he’s sure made a splash. The former Obama-era head of U.S. Border Patrol and current acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement pushed for sweeping nationwide deportation raids, a truly horrifying proposal Trump liked so much he’s gone ahead and given Morgan a new job.
Morgan will now head Customs and Border Protection, replacing John Sanders, who announced his resignation earlier this week. Under Sanders’s watch, the Trump administration faced rightful criticism over a migrant detention facility in Clint, Texas, where children lived in unsanitary and inhumane conditions. Though CBP moved about 300 of those children out of the facility, they appear to be moving them back in, and starting on July 5 they’ll be under Morgan’s jurisdiction.
For the last few months, the Department of Homeland Security has been in chaos, rife with leadership shakeups and resignations. And all that’s been going on while a crisis rages at the souther border, with migrant children housed in hellish conditions, and multiple immigrant deaths reported in ICE custody. Morgan, a Fox News contributor who loves the border wall, is one of many players in this miserable game. They seem to be ratcheting up in their dedication to the Trump agenda as the border crisis further deteriorates.
“President Trump’s latest leadership change only worsens the chaos at the department,” Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told the New York Times. “D.H.S. is charged with keeping the nation secure, but the president is putting its leadership through a constant game of musical chairs to fit his political agenda.”
Meanwile, also on Thursday House Democrats caved on a Senate border funding package, even though on Wednesday Nancy Pelosi vowed the House would push for their version of the bill instead. The House version provided, among other things, better protections for migrant children and budget cuts to ICE—moderate Democrats fought against that latter point, allegedly because they were worried the ICE cuts could cost them re-election. ICE is costing migrant children their lives, but, you know.