On January 20 – Inauguration Day – President Trump nominated former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to serve as the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that includes both the Border Patrol and the inspectors at the ports of entry. Finally, after nearly five needless months of delay, the Senate confirmed on Tuesday Scott to serve as the sixth CBP commissioner on a party-line vote of 51-46. Respectfully, the “yeas” should have been unanimous, because no one is better suited to head the agency on the front lines of border, port, and maritime security during a time of global turmoil.
Scott’s 9/11/21 Letter to Senate Leadership
One could argue Scott first rose to national prominence in 2020 when he became the 24th chief of the Border Patrol, but in my opinion he actually emerged into the spotlight only once he retired from that position in mid-August 2021 after serving a Biden administration that cared little for border security.
Not that I have any beef with Raul Ortiz, his replacement and like Scott a career professional. Somebody had to lead the Border Patrol, and by all accounts he did all he could to protect line agents while attempting to carry out the Biden administration’s (questionable) migrant-release policies.
After Scott left, however, and at great reputational risk, he truly distinguished himself on September 11th, 2021 (coincidentally, the 20th anniversary of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil) when he sent a letter to Senate leadership warning them of the national-security dangers inherent in the Biden administration’s migrant policies.
As I noted shortly after it was released on John Solomon’s “Just the News” website, Scott’s letter was “an eye-opening, informative, and at times scary read”.
It was also prescient.
The chief expounded on how the Biden administration had triggered the migrant crisis, as “Common sense border security recommendations from experienced career professionals [were] ignored and stymied by inexperienced political employees” who were “laser-focused on expediting the flow of migrants into the U.S.”
He also explained in that letter how the cartels exploited the migrant miasma to move their drugs and other illicit “merchandise” into the United States:
“[I]llegal entries are being scripted and controlled by Plaza Bosses that work directly for the transnational criminal organizations (TCO) to create controllable gaps in border security. These gaps are then exploited to easily smuggle contraband, criminals, or even potential terrorists into the U.S. at will. Even when [Border Patrol] detects the illegal entry, agents are spread so thin that they often lack the capability to make a timely interdiction.”
If you want to understand why overdose deaths in the United States reached an all-time high in 2022, read the letter and examine Border Patrol’s migrant apprehension statistics for FY 2022, a year in which agents also nabbed a record number of illegal entrants.
“The Most Secure Border … Disintegrated into Chaos”
Congressional Democrats were largely uninterested in what Scott had to say, but once Republicans assumed control of the House following the 2022 mid-term elections, they were eager for his guidance.
Scott testified twice before the House Judiciary Committee, once at a May 2023 hearing titled “The Biden Border Crisis” and again at a September 2023 hearing on “Terrorist Entry Through the Southwest Border”, and his statements featured prominently in many of the committee’s subsequent reports.
In June 2023, he appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee in conjunction with its investigation of the role Biden’s DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, played in the border crisis.
As he noted in his opening statement at that hearing:
“Decades of bipartisan border security improvements were erased on January 2021, when the Biden administration announced actions that were heard around the world as the U.S. borders are now open. As predicted, the most secure border the United States had ever enjoyed disintegrated into chaos. The Biden administration’s claims that they inherited a border in shambles, that surges in illegal immigration like this are normal, or that allowing more illegal aliens to go through a port of entry is solving the problem are not accurate.”
Keep in mind that after Scott offered that testimony, an additional 4.3 million inadmissible aliens were encountered at the borders and the ports under the Biden administration by the agency the chief now helms.
Now-CBP Commissioner Scott is coming in at a high point, with what is again the most secure border in U.S. history and strong popular support for ensuring it remains that way. Personally, I cannot imagine a better person for the job.
This piece was originally published at the Center for Immigration Studies, CIS.org.
