By Peter Barry Chowka
Last January, Mark Morgan, the last head of the U.S. Border Patrol agency under the Obama Administration, started weighing in on the illegal alien invasion crisis at the southern border.
On January 8, Law & Crime was one of the first news outlets to break the story about the former Border Patrol director. Morgan, it said,
went public on Tuesday with a message that may surprise the White House: he supports Mr. Trump and his efforts to get funding for a border wall.
“I’m here today breaking my silence to tell the American people that the president is correct in what he’s doing,” Morgan said in an interview with the Law & Crime Network. “The wall works.”
Law & Crime reminded its readers about Morgan’s tenure as President Obama’s Border Patrol head.
When he was still running the Border Patrol, Morgan referred to the needs at the border as a “fence.” He told a Senate committee in November 2016, “Do we need more fencing? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Do we need it everywhere? No. Is it the sole answer? No.” Morgan again said on Tuesday that a physical barrier is not the whole answer and is not needed along the entire border, but it is significant.
“It would be like having a high-tech security system, but not having doors or windows in your house,” Morgan said.
Asked if he was encouraged by the White House to make his views known, Morgan said no.
“I’m doing this on my own for one reason,” he said. “I’m a patriot.”
Morgan says he was asked to resign by the Trump White House one day after the president signed an executive order authorizing the immediate construction of a border wall. Behind the scenes, Morgan believes, was pressure from officials of the Border Patrol agents union which opposed the appointment of an outsider to run the agency. Morgan spent the bulk of his law enforcement career with the FBI.
In recent months, private citizen Mark Morgan has written columns for a variety of publications, has received coverage in the mainstream print and online media, and has appeared frequently on cable news television including regularly on Fox News, where he is now a contributor.
On Saturday morning, April 13, Morgan appeared live on Fox & Friends Weekend. The brief video of his appearance is well worth watching. Link to video at Fox News here.
The topic under discussion was President Trump’s floating the idea of transporting illegal aliens, who have entered the country and cannot be deported, to sanctuary cities so that those cities, which say they welcome “migrants” without reservation, can take care of them. Morgan said the President’s comments have grown out of his understandable frustration with the crisis and being checkmated at every turn to try and solve it by the Congress and the courts.
Sanctuary cities are part of this crisis. They are signaling and telling the immigrants come here illegally, exploit our laws – our generosity – not only will we take you in, we’ll protect you, we’ll reward you, and we will thwart the law enforcement from trying to do their job. It’s truly unbelievable.
Morgan’s comments on Fox & Friends represent one of the best summaries of the current crisis at the border that I have seen. He is a source well worth following.
Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Peter’s new website is http://peter.media. Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka
