The man who would be in charge of guarding a wall with Mexico if Donald Trump is elected president isn’t so sure the strategy would keep undocumented immigrants out. Instead, Mark Morgan — the first outsider to lead the 21,ooo uniformed agents who make up the U.S. Border Patrol — has had another priority in the three months he’s been on the job: changing the agency’s culture.
[Amid Immigration Debate, New Border Chief Seeks To Turn Around Beleaguered Force, by Lisa Rein, WaPo, September 28, 2016]Note the open contempt for the actual responsibilities of Border Patrol. Morgan's goal is not keeping out illegal aliens or terrorists, but changing a culture, a culture that he alleges is violent and abusive to illegal aliens and drug smugglers.
“The piece we need to get better at when a shooting happens is, what happens now?” he said. “I don’t think we were very good at all about making decisions like whether the use of force was within our guidelines.”There is, however, no problem with shootings and other use-of-force incidents involving Border Patrol Agents. In fact, all the major incidents of agent involved shootings of illegal aliens have been found to be justified as this writer reported back in July 2016.
The import of this appointment is that the appointment of Morgan is a political decision to support the ongoing Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty for illegal aliens. Instead of concentrating on finding and deporting illegal aliens, Morgan is changing the "culture" of the Border Patrol from one of a history of aggressive enforcement of immigration law to that of a law enforcement agency neutered, neutered as the Obama Justice Department has neutered the Ferguson Police Department and black crime is now running rampant. That, of course, is a feature, not a bug, just as Obama wants fewer blacks in prison, so he wants more illegal aliens in the United States.
Morgan is part of that program. Even the WaPo pointed out that despite Morgan being the head of an immigration law enforcement agency, Moran has never made an immigration arrest.
Morgan has never arrested an illegal immigrant. But Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske turned to him — overlooking others who came up through the ranks — to change course in what is, even by law enforcement standards, an insular culture.It was as if Morgan and Kerlikowske were treating the Border Patrol as a criminal organization, which they are doing. The crime being keeping Democrat voters out of the United States.
More importantly, it is necessary to point out that legally Morgan cannot make an arrest of an illegal alien. He has never completed the course of training required by the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, section 287(a) (5)(B), of Federal employees, or deputized State law enforcement officers, to be designated as an immigration officer authorized to make immigration arrests.
Under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General, an officer or employee of the Service may carry a firearm and may execute and serve any order, warrant, subpoena, summons, or other process issued under the authority of the United States. The authority to make arrests under paragraph (5)(B) shall only be effective on and after the date on which the Attorney General publishes final regulations which (i) prescribe the categories of officers and employees of the Service who may use force (including deadly force) and the circumstances under which such force may be used, (ii) establish standards with respect to enforcement activities of the Service, (iii) require that any officer or employee of the Service is not authorized to make arrests under paragraph (5)(B) unless the officer or employee has received certification as having completed a training program which covers such arrests and standards described in clause (ii), and (iv) establish an expedited, internal review process for violations o f such standards, which process is consistent with standard agency procedure regarding confidentiality of matters related to internal investigations.What we have is a Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who cannot make an arrest of an illegal alien. This is clearly part of a contrived plan to ruin the Border Patrol in particular, and end immigration law enforcement in general.
And to further prove the point, Morgan announces that a wall or fence with Mexico will do nothing.
“A simplistic answer to an immensely complex problem,” is how Kerlikowske describes the wall. He notes that the government “spends a tremendous amount of money repairing what we have now” on the Southwest border — 600 miles of very intermittent fencing — from damage from erosion, flooding and holes when migrants break through.
“Does infrastructure play a role? Of course,” Morgan said. “It’s one element of a multifaceted approach. It isn’t the answer.”This is a clear political declaration that nothing will be done to secure the border with Mexico. Walls and fences work on the border with Mexico. That is the reason the left opposes walls and fences.
And he thinks he will survive the election of Donald J. Trump.
When it comes to enhancing border security, the wall the Republican nominee for president has proposed to keep out illegal immigrants does not top Morgan’s list, however hotly debated it has been. As a civil servant and not a political appointee, Morgan will be in the job whether Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected.This is quite wrong. Morgan is a political appointee who will be replaced soon after the Trump Administration starts, as the new CBP Commissioner will inform him he has lost the confidence of both the Commissioner and the Border Patrol Agents under his command. Morgan will have no choice but to resign. Most likely, though, he will be back at the FBI or retired come Inauguration Day. In any event, his overtly political statements have made him eligible for removal from office for cause and since he actually cannot legally execute his duties, since he has not completed the Border Patrol Academy or other training that enables him to act as an immigration officer, he can be removed.
Worse yet, he knows he is being political, something prohibited to civil servants:
He quipped, “I try not to be in the business of sound bites.”A political sound bite if there ever was one, and clearly directed at Donald J. Trump. No civil servant would say something like that.
President Trump will have his work cut out for him upon inauguration, but most of the Border Patrol will have his back against Morgan.
His appointment was criticized by the powerful Border Patrol union, which said an outsider could never gain agents’ trust.And he won't, and he won't last. Morgan might enjoy playing dress-up in a uniform he did not earn, but he is everything antithetical to a law enforcement professional. Slandering the men you lead is not leadership, but politics at its most base.
