Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders resigned on Tuesday, which goes into effect on July 5, amid detention center controversies at the US southern border.
President Donald Trump knew changes would come to the agency, but he tried to convince Sanders to stay on the job.
Sanders joined CBP a year ago. His first role included “integrating technology and other management functions across the agency.” Trump elevated Sanders to acting CBP chief after he promoted the previous chief Kevin McAleenan to DHS secretary when Kirstjen Nielsen resigned.
From Fox News:
Lawyers who visited facilities where migrant children were being held last week described squalid conditions to The Associated Press, which first reported on the complaints. The conditions at the station in Clint included inadequate food, lack of medical care, and older children trying to care for toddlers.Many children were moved out of the facility in recent days. But CBP then said officials had moved more than 100 kids back to the station.Trump said he was “very concerned” about the current conditions of border detention facilities, but claimed they were even worse during President Obama’s administration.The resignation came as House lawmakers were scrambling to pass a $4.5 billion funding bill to combat the escalating humanitarian crisis at the border — with Republicans accusing Democrats of “playing games” with the crisis, and Democrats urging their GOP counterparts to “show some decency.”“I’m calling on the speaker not to play politics, to take the Senate bill and that can become law, and that can help humanitarian aid along the border,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said at a Republican press conference. “This is not the time to play politics.”
An internal government watchdog discovered that 900 people lived in a space for 125 people at a CBP holding cell in El Paso, TX, in May. Others witnessed adults “held for days or weeks in standing-room-only conditions.” Some of them had to stand on toilets in order to make space.
Sanders said that the agency became “overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis as well as turmoil and frequent changes in policy direction inside the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the agency’s leadership.”
These holding cells are not meant to hold people for a long period of time. Maybe a few hours, but definitely not days.
You know what I find pathetic? Both sides just want to stick it to the other. Brandon Darby, who covers the border for Breitbart Texas, sent out this tweet:
This situation stems back years. It is only at the forefront now because ORANGE MAN BAD or something.
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