President Joe Biden’s own ICE director revealed what he would like to see the outgoing commander-in-chief do — as officers struggle to control the flow of migrants entering through the southern border.
Patrick Lechleitner, the outgoing Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared on Fox & Friends on Thursday, when he said he wished the president had imposed his executive order closing the border years earlier.
“I would have liked to see that the executive order that they implemented about a little over a year ago helped so much,” Lechleitner said of Biden’s order in June to temporarily suspend entry of non-citizens once the number average border encounters exceeded 2,500. per day for seven days.
‘And we could have implemented that much earlier. It would have helped a lot.’
When Fox News host Steve Doocy Lechleitner then asked why he thought Biden didn’t take action sooner, the ICE director said he didn’t know.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know. And I’m, you know, I execute, I run the agency, I execute, I enforce. But I don’t know why they didn’t do that before.
“I know it’s been going on for a long time. I would have liked to have seen it sooner.
“I think it helped a lot, it really helped our mission, but I wanted to see that sooner,” he added of the order, which remained in effect until two weeks after it averaged fewer than 1,500 encounters along the border been. .
Patrick Lechleitner, the outgoing director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared on Fox & Friends on Thursday when he said he wished the president would impose his executive order closing the border years earlier.
Biden announced an executive order in June to temporarily suspend entry of non-citizens once the number of average border encounters exceeded 2,500 per day for seven days
Lechleitner’s comments come after a explosive investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed that agency heads often did not meet with the president or speak with him one-on-one.
Instead, many were relegated to speaking to some of his staffers while hiding Biden’s deteriorating mental health for years.
Officials in attendance included Presidential Advisor Steve Ricchetti, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard.
Some lower-level Biden aides have even complained that this secretive “triumvirate” – also known as the “Biden whisperers” – was developing outsized influence over America’s oldest-ever president.
Among those who said they could not meet directly with the president was Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
He told the Journal that he has been focused for two years on reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes broad national security surveillance powers.
But, he said, he would only meet with Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials — never Biden himself.
“I haven’t really had any personal contact with this president,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. “I had more personal contact with Obama, which is strange because I was much younger.”
Lechleitner’s comments come after an explosive investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that agency heads often did not meet with the president or speak with him one-on-one.
Sen. Joe Manchin, the independent-turned West Virginia Democrat, also said he noticed the president lacked stamina and often relied on his staff during his time in the White House.
“I just thought maybe the president just lost that battle,” Manchin said. “The ability to keep going, just grind, grind, grind.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington also said he was concerned about what he saw as the Biden administration’s overly optimistic comments about the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I implored them to set expectations low,” Smith said of his conversations with the Biden administration.
He said he tried to speak directly to Biden to share his insights on the Middle East, but was never able to get on the phone with him.
Biden’s debate with Donald Trump in June was the reason the American public and Democratic politicians called for him to drop his re-election bid
But Biden’s mental decline became increasingly apparent, especially after special counsel Robert Hur released a report last year that depicted a then 81-year-old forgetful and frail.
Hur decided not to charge Biden with keeping classified documents in his Delaware garage because he would “likely present himself to a jury” as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, older man with a bad memory.”
At the end of June this year, Biden’s decline was on full display as he debated Donald Trump.
Gaffes, fumbles and blank stares from the president filled the hour-and-a-half television event. It proved catastrophic for his campaign.
The confrontation with Trump ultimately led the public, and even senior Democrats in Washington, to call on Biden to end his bid for re-election.
A month after the debate, Biden threw in the towel and supported his Vice President Kamala Harris, who defeated Trump on November 5.
Still, White House spokesman Andrew Bates refuted the Wall Street Journal story that Biden has rejected.
Instead, Bates said he has “achieved the most accomplished record of any modern commander in chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives.”