The leader of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency that secures entry points at the nation’s border and has played a central role in President Trump’s immigration crackdown, announced on Thursday that he was resigning.
“It’s just time,” Michael Banks, who worked for Border Patrol for over 20 years, said in an interview with Fox News. “I feel like I got the ship back on course,” he added, referring to immigration enforcement at the southern border. “It’s time to enjoy the family and life.”
Mr. Banks is the latest high-profile official to leave a post in the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
His exit comes less than a month after Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he would leave the agency on May 31. On Tuesday, the Trump administration tapped David Venturella, a former career ICE official, to serve as the agency’s next acting leader. Mr. Trump fired Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary in March after a string of controversies.
Rodney Scott, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees Border Patrol, said in a statement, “We thank U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks for his decades of service to this country and congratulate him on his second retirement after returning to serve during one of the most challenging periods for border security.”
Mr. Banks previously retired from Border Patrol in 2023 and was appointed to be the first Texas “border czar” by Gov. Greg Abbott, who called for more aggressive immigration enforcement during the Biden administration.
The recent leadership shake-up in the Homeland Security Department raised questions about the direction of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The president has expanded Border Patrol’s role in the crackdown, deploying agents to interior cities across the country. Border Patrol has typically operated at the farthest edges of the country, policing areas in between ports of entry. In January, the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by a Border Patrol agent and a Customs and Border Protection officer thrust the agency’s history of aggressive tactics into the spotlight.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Thursday.
