John Sanders Resigns as Head of Customs and Border Protection

By Louise Radnofsky, Alicia A. Caldwell and Andrew Duehren

A top U.S. border-enforcement official resigned amid growing clamor about the treatment of migrant children in U.S. custody, while Congress wrestled over billions of dollars in funding to address the surge of Central American families seeking asylum at the southwest border.

John Sanders, acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, submitted his resignation to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, effective late next week. He didn’t give a reason for his departure, but people familiar with the agency’s leadership said Mr. Sanders had been overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and the frequent changes in personnel and policy direction inside the Trump administration.

President Trump said Tuesday that he hadn’t spoken with Mr. Sanders about his resignation but that he knew of coming personnel changes at CBP. That raised the possibility of a new reshuffle involving Mark Morgan, installed a few weeks ago as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The White House had previously sought to elevate Mr. Morgan at CBP, according to a former U.S. official.

The CBP has been one of the agencies charged with responding to the flow of adults and children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Trump administration has said this migration by people fleeing violence and poverty has brought the U.S.’s border infrastructure to a breaking point, and the surge has ignited an explosive public debate amid reports of worsening conditions of detained immigrants and several deaths of children in U.S. custody.

The changes in immigration-enforcement leadership come as attorneys and doctors have reported on squalid conditions at a holding facility in Clint, Texas, including disease outbreaks and dirty, hungry children caring for other children.

A CBP official said Tuesday that after hundreds of children were moved to a temporary tent facility in nearby El Paso over the weekend and into Monday, about 100 children were moved back to Clint on Tuesday.

The official said he “didn’t buy” some of the more egregious allegations about conditions in Clint, including that children said they didn’t have access to food.

“I have also provided, as a processing agent, juice, milk, cookies and snacks of all types on any request when I received it, and I know our agents are still doing that today,” he said.

Mr. Trump, a Republican who has made toughening immigration policy his signature issue and has characterized the Central American migration as a threat to U.S. border security, has said he would impose tariffs against Mexico if it doesn’t do more to halt the passage of families through that country to the southern U.S. border.

Last week he announced, then postponed, stepped-up immigration-enforcement raids across the U.S. if Congress didn’t pass tougher restrictions aimed at deterring people from pursuing asylum claims in the U.S.

The worsening conditions for detainees at the border spurred the House to pass a $4.5 billion package of emergency funding for food and shelter for border arrivals that the Trump administration requested over the spring. Democratic lawmakers worked through Monday night and Tuesday to make a series of last-minute changes to the bill and win support from left-leaning and Hispanic members who had raised concerns about the original bill.

The House bill already places tighter controls on how immigration agencies can use the money and doesn’t provide any new funding for enforcement personnel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, unlike a $4.6 billion Senate version that passed nearly unanimously out of committee last week.

The Trump administration threatened to veto the current House legislation, and Republicans in the House and the Senate have said the House should take up the Senate bill.

On Tuesday afternoon at the White House, Mr. Trump said he was very concerned about conditions at migrant detainee facilities and believed the migrant crisis would compel Democrats to sign off on an aid package. “We need the votes of Democrats,” Mr. Trump added.

The Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security said Tuesday that Mr. Sanders’s resignation at CBP “adds fuel to the chaos” and said White House officials were trying to strong-arm the Homeland Security Department.

“CBP is clearly failing to carry out its mission given the Trump administration’s disastrous immigration policies,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) said.

The border agency has long said its facilities were never intended to hold children—or any people for more than a few hours. A government watchdog found last month that CBP holding cells in El Paso were dangerously overcrowded, with as many as 900 people in a space designed for about 125 in one instance.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Tuesday that he would still seek to bring the emergency supplemental bill for a vote this week, but he ruled out further changes on immigration in the near future.

“The only thing we can deal with in the short term is the humanitarian crisis, and we’re going to deal with that this week,” he said. Congress leaves Washington after this week for a July 4 recess.

Before becoming acting head, Mr. Sanders had been the border agency’s operating chief and was an ally of Mr. McAleenan’s. His departure leaves Mr. McAleenan as the sole remaining top immigration official inside DHS who had a leadership role there at the beginning of April, when then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen departed.

Mr. McAleenan has also come under criticism from conservatives outside the White House. On Saturday, former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan suggested on Fox News that the acting secretary was responsible for media leaks detailing the postponed enforcement operation targeting newly arrived migrant families who had been ordered out of the country. Mr. Homan has been named by Mr. Trump as a potential coordinator, or czar, on immigration policy within the White House; he has said it is premature to say whether he might take such a position.

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agency’s union, wrote on the union’s website Tuesday that Mr. McAleenan’s “refusal to do his job puts law enforcement and Americans at risk.” He also said Mr. McAleenan’s “personal beliefs are rooted in liberal policy and philosophy,” citing in part, past campaign contributions.

Mr. McAleenan contributed about $2,400 to then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008. Mr. McAleenan, who has declined to discuss his personal politics, told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Obama was one of his law-school instructors in Chicago.

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