US Border Patrol chief Michael Banks is resigning, in latest DHS leadership change

Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks speaks to reporters during the visit to the US-Mexico border by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Sunland Park, N.M., Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, File) 2026-05-14T16:57:58Z WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of U.S. Border Patrol, the agency tasked with securing the nation’s frontiers and increasingly tapped by the Trump administration for immigration operations in American cities, announced his resignation Thursday. Michael Banks’ decision, announced in a Fox News interview and later confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, is the latest leadership shake-up of officials implementing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and comes as the Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach. “It’s just time,” Banks was quoted as saying in a report on the Fox News website. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure disastrous chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen,” he said. In a statement, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Rodney Scott, thanked Banks for his service “during one of the most challenging periods for border security.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear who will replace Banks. He led an agency at the forefront of Trump’s high-profile immigration enforcement efforts but kept a lower profile than some other officials such as Gregory Bovino, a now-retired commander who became a public face of the city operations. CBP is one of the federal agencies that participated since last year in a series of immigration enforcement operations, carried out primarily in cities governed by Democrats —an effort that triggered a spike in arrests and led to the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this year at the hands of federal immigration officers. (