WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 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\u00a0appears to be recalibrating<\/a>\u00a0its approach.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just time,\u201d Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website. \u201cI feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure disastrous chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen,\u201d he said.<\/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 immediately 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 now-retired commander who became a public face of the city operations.<\/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 \u2014an 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 former Republican senator from Oklahoma, became homeland security secretary. DHS oversees CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.<\/p>\n