U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told Fox News Wednesday that morale at his agency is “going through the roof” under the Trump administration.
Speaking to “America’s Newsroom,” Banks said, “We’ve had the handcuffs taken off” and “we’re allowed to actually do our job, which is go out and enforce the law.
“Under this administration, they have literally taken the handcuffs off and allowed us to enforce law instead of policies that were created to contradict the law and so our morale has continued to rise,” he continued.
Banks’ remarks come following a new report by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that revealed there were fewer apprehensions at the southern border in the entire month of March than there were in the first two days of the month in 2024 under the Biden administration.
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U.S. Border Patrol processes a group of migrants near a highway in February 2024 outside Eagle Pass, Texas. Banks told Fox News that apprehensions there have fallen sharply. (Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)
Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has signed orders ending birthright citizenship, suspended refugee admissions, ended the use of an app at the southern border to admit migrants via humanitarian parole, and resumed border wall construction.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, Border Patrol agents are now back to doing the jobs they signed up for: securing the border, rather than serving as travel agents for illegal aliens,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this month. “The Los Angeles Times captured the Trump effect on the border with a recent article. Their headline read ‘California, Mexico border, once overwhelmed, is now nearly empty with so few migrants coming into the U.S.’ They wrote, ‘shelters that once served migrants have completely closed.’”
Banks also told Fox News on Wednesday that recruiting is “looking great” and the Border Patrol is “seeing some of our highest numbers ever.”
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A Border Patrol agent works to seal an illegal cross-border tunnel between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on March 11. (Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images)
“Really excited about that because as you know, during the previous four years under the Biden administration, we saw a mass exodus from the Border Patrol and we saw some of our lowest recruiting numbers. We’re seeing the opposite,” he added. “We’re seeing agents pull retirement paperwork in order to continue staying in and serve, and we’re seeing our recruiting numbers go through the roof.”
Banks said at one point, the area of Eagle Pass, Texas, “was seeing an average of three to four thousand [apprehensions] a day.
A large group of migrants, some carrying children, cross the Rio Grande and arrive in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Sept. 27, 2023. (Benjamin Lowy for Fox News Digital )
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“Right now, Eagle Pass, Texas is seeing an average of 18 apprehensions a day and very few gotaways, little to none. Some days zero gotaways,” he said.
Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
