Michael Banks said his resignation was effective immediately, saying “it’s just time.”

The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation’s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday.

Michael Banks’ 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’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach.

“It’s just time,” Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website. “I 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,” he said.

  • kylie_kraft@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    17 days ago

    Not one mention in the article of Banks’s use of overseas brothels, almost certainly partaking in the human trafficking that he’s supposed to be fighting as part of his job.

    Edit: In case it wasn’t clear, this scandal is likely the real reason for Banks’s sudden retirement.

    • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPMEnglish
      21·
      17 days ago

      I hadn’t seen that. Thanks for posting about it. They don’t really talk about their ages either:

      Trump’s Border Patrol chief accused of regularly soliciting sex workers abroad

      Six current and former Border Patrol agents are coming forward to accuse the agency’s chief, Michael Banks, of repeatedly soliciting sex workers while overseas, reported the conservative Washington Examiner on Wednesday.

      “Banks ‘bragged’ to colleagues while in his previous management role at Border Patrol about paying for sex with prostitutes while traveling in Colombia and Thailand over the course of a decade,” said the report. “Banks’ behavior was said to have been investigated by Customs and Border Protection officials twice, including last year, but the investigation ended abruptly while Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in office, leading to more questions.”

      One of the sources, who claims Banks tried to invite him along on one of these trips, told the Examiner, “I don’t know how he became the chief of the Border Patrol with his character. He’s going to third-world countries to take advantage of poor f------ women, which disgusts the hell out of me.”

      https://www.rawstory.com/michael-banks-border-patrol/