{"id":71753,"date":"2026-05-15T00:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T00:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/71753\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T00:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T00:47:10","slug":"us-border-patrol-chief-michael-banks-announces-his-resignation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/71753\/","title":{"rendered":"US Border Patrol chief Michael Banks announces his resignation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation\u2019s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday.<\/p>\n

Michael Banks\u2019 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\u2019s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to its centerpiece policy of mass deportations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just time,\u201d Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website, which said the resignation was effective immediately. \u201cI feel like I got the ship back on course,\u201d he said, referring to what he described as previous chaos at the southern border. Banks said it was \u201ctime to enjoy the family and life.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service \u201cduring one of the most challenging periods for border security.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

It was not clear who will replace Banks. He led an agency at the forefront of Trump\u2019s high-profile immigration enforcement efforts but kept a lower profile than some other officials such as Gregory Bovino<\/a>, a now-retired commander who became a public face of the immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

Gregory Bovino finds a new mission in retirement: Trolling DHS<\/a><\/p>\n

Border Patrol participated in immigration enforcement operation in US cities<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Banks\u2019 resignation takes place two months after Markwayne Mullin<\/a>, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma, became homeland security secretary. DHS oversees CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As head of CBP, Banks became a pivotal figure in the Trump administration\u2019s 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\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n

64 days in Chicago: The story of Operation Midway Blitz<\/a><\/p>\n

Banks had a long career at Border Patrol<\/p>\n

Banks returned to the Border Patrol last year after a long agency career that had never landed him in its senior ranks. His star had risen as border czar to Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, during a period when illegal crossings reached record highs and the state launched a multibillion-dollar enforcement surge that led to turf battles with the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

Banks kept a relatively low public profile as arrests for illegal crossings that have plunged to their lowest levels since the mid-1960s, a trend that began toward the end of that Democratic administration.<\/p>\n

Banks did not appear publicly at the Border Security Expo this month in Phoenix, an annual conference at which government officials update contractors on the state of the border. Scott, who was Banks\u2019 supervisor, is a close ally of Trump border czar Tom Homan and has acted more as the agency\u2019s public face.<\/p>\n

Banks, who grew up in a small town in Warner Robins, about 100 miles southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, has said his first job was picking peaches at an orchard when he was 14 years old. He worked with migrant farm workers and learned \u201ccompassion and humility,\u201d he said, in an interview published last year on the CBP website.<\/p>\n

Banks, in the interview, said he was \u201chonored\u201d to have returned to the agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States Border Patrol will be unapologetic in its enforcement of our nation\u2019s laws,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Elliot Spagat in San Diego, California contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation\u2019s frontiers and increasingly tapped by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[493,2182,1961,50,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-71753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pete-hegseth","8":"tag-immigration","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-national-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pete-hegseth"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116575839814735294","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}