Tim Steller's opinion: As CBP chief, Magnus must reduce politicization of agencies loyal to Trump

Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus started the Trump years managing a conflict with the U.S. Border Patrol and the agents’ union.

Now he may end up managing them.

If he wins confirmation as the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, among Magnus’ big challenges will be reorienting an agency that went all in for Trump and taming a union that was making immigration policy through its direct access to the president.

That pattern of politicization was beginning to become evident in 2017. On March 1 that year, agents encountered a Honduran man who had crossed the border illegally near Nogales, and he struggled with them before they could arrest him, eventually taking him to the hospital.

Video: Record Number Of Children At U.S.-Mexico Border In March

Two days later, he fled from Banner University Medical Center in Tucson, where a Border Patrol agent was supposed to be watching him.

Tucson police helped search for the escapee for more than two hours that Friday afternoon, their helicopter circling the neighborhoods west of the university and north of downtown.

But the Tucson Police Department declined to let the Border Patrol set up a command post at a Tucson police station and called off their assistance when darkness fell, upsetting the agency and union.

Union vice president Art Del Cueto, a Tucson Sector agent, put in a late-night call to then-Sen. Martha McSally, blasted out a public statement and lambasted Tucson police on the union’s favorite news outlet, Breitbart.

“This is now the times we are living in,” Del Cueto said on the union local’s Facebook page. “Where one law enforcement agency has put politics over rule of law and oath of office.”

It was the start of four years in which the agents’ union, the U.S. Border Patrol and Magnus found themselves often in political opposition to each other.

Magnus came in as a reformist police chief and developed publicly liberal views on immigration, but he occasionally had to work with a federal agency increasingly outspoken in its support of Trump’s hardline approach.

Magnus considered the wall a waste of money, as he said in December 2018 testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee and repeated in a February 2019 interview on National Public Radio:

“Well, I don’t think that’s the top priority of most police chiefs or sheriffs. We understand that border security is important, but frankly, we have a lot of other issues that we’d probably put a little higher on the agenda.”

That ran directly against a massive public-relations campaign run by the Border Patrol and its union. Sector chiefs, line agents and others appeared on social media repeating the motto “walls work.” The union, which was initially skeptical of spending on the wall, later supported a government shutdown to get more wall money.

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A photo of Trump posted April 5 this year by former aide Stephen Miller shows that Trump still has on his desk a plaque made out of a piece of border barrier presented to him in 2019 by Gloria Chavez, then chief patrol agent of the El Centro Sector.

“In recognition of your commitment and unwavering support for the men and women on the front lines and the border security mission of the United States, we would like to present you with this piece of the first 30-foot border wall installed along the United States border with Mexico,” it says.

Chavez has since been elevated to chief of the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, one of many high-ranking officials who made public displays of loyalty to Trump, only to be ostensibly answering to a new president now, one who appoints people like Magnus to oversee her.

As the Trump years went on, Magnus also took stands on asylum and migrants that were at odds with those of Trump and his Customs and Border Protection loyalists, but not so radical as to disqualify him from consideration.

On June 16, 2018, amid the child-separation scandal, Magnus tweeted, “Troubling questions for police chiefs whose departments directly or indirectly assist w/immigration enforcement that separates parents from children: Is this consistent with the oath you took to serve & protect? Is this humane or moral? Does this make your community safer?”

In 2019, the number of asylum-seekers crossing the border increased, and on July 15 that year, Magnus tweeted, “As the debate continues over refugees and asylum seekers — many who we temporarily house in Tucson — it’s worth being reminded why human beings flee from their homelands in the first place (not unlike a lot of our ancestors).”

Then he quoted a Somali writer’s poem, which began, “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark/you only run for the border/when you see the whole city is running as well”.

On the other hand, Magnus opposed the 2018 sanctuary-city initiative that would have almost eliminated the Tucson Police Department’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The initiative lost, leaving many local progressives angry with Magnus and Tucson's power structure. 

His more liberal point of view on asylum is anathema to officials of the former regime like ex-acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan, whom Magnus would replace.

Morgan has publicly condemned the end of strict Trump-era restrictions on asylum that he supported, including instant expulsion due to COVID-19 and the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

But if Magnus is confirmed, he might find grounds for some agreement on how to handle increased numbers of asylum-seeking families and children.

Magnus could move to extract Border Patrol agents from the business of handling asylum cases by funneling the families and children back through ports of entry and into a more robust asylum system.

That would undoubtedly please agents who were trained in law enforcement, not social services.

But of course, even if he reduces the Trump-era influence in CBP, the agency and his role will remain political.

As Magnus said after the March 2017 conflict: “We live and work in a political environment. To be oblivious to political considerations would be foolish. But it shouldn’t be the driving factor in these decisions.”