WASHINGTON _ The White House is considering an Obama-era Border Patrol chief to take over as head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a key role in an administration that's seeking to crack down on migrants crossing the southern border, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mark Morgan, the candidate for ICE, led the Border Patrol in the final months of President Barack Obama's administration and was removed from the position after President Donald Trump assumed the presidency. Morgan, a former FBI agent, supported a border wall, one of Trump's signature campaign issues.
Trump's former acting director of ICE, Ronald Vitiello, quit in April after the president told reporters that he was pulling his nomination for the director's job because he wanted to go in a "different direction" with someone "tougher."
Trump has strongly indicated that he would make the issues of illegal immigration and border security a centerpiece of his 2020 election campaign. Apprehensions at the southern border have surged despite his administration's stricter immigration policies, and he pushed out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other top immigration officials in April.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on consideration of Morgan.
Trump has ordered his administration to propose regulations that would impose fees on migrants applying for asylum and speed up the application process. In a presidential memorandum released Monday night, Trump said "the security and humanitarian crisis" at the U.S.-Mexico border "undermines our nation's security and sovereignty."
In another personnel matter, Trump's Homeland Security adviser Doug Fears is leaving the White House in July and returning to the Coast Guard, national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday. Fears, a rear admiral in the Coast Guard, was on a one-year assignment to the White House that was extended to two years when he replaced Tom Bossert as Trump's Homeland Security adviser. Bossert departed after Bolton arrived in 2018.
Rear Admiral Peter Brown, who serves as commander of Coast Guard's district headquartered in Miami, will take over Fears' job.
