THE FALL GUY: Biden border chief Chris Magnus resigns amid pressure from Homeland Security.

He said he believed he was doing the job Mr. Biden asked of him in the direction he was taking CBP.

That direction has been the worst border numbers on record, with more illegal immigrants encountered and more fentanyl and terrorism suspects detected than ever before.

Mr. Magnus, who had been chief of police in Tucson, Arizona, took over at CBP when numbers were already bad. They started deteriorating at the beginning of the Biden administration.

But during 11 months on the job, Mr. Magnus made little headway in bringing the numbers down.

Border Patrol agents and Republicans on Capitol Hill blame Mr. Mayorkas — indeed, if the GOP takes control of the House there will likely be an effort to impeach the secretary.

Mr. Mayorkas, though, seemed to finger Mr. Magnus as the hurdle to better border security.

Mr. Mayorkas is slated to appear on Capitol Hill for testimony next week, and the border situation is likely to come up.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Mr. Biden had accepted Mr. Magnus’s resignation and ”appreciates” his lengthy law enforcement career.

As Ed Morrissey wrote on Friday, before Magnus resigned, “This also raises another question of whether Biden and Mayorkas want to push out Magnus as a way to blame him for everything that’s gone wrong, to discredit Magnus in case he goes to Congress with what he knows about the border crisis, or both…At some point, the silly impotence of trying to push Magnus out will end as it should have last month, before the nasty leaks and innuendo. Biden will formally fire Magnus, and Magnus will then start chatting up House Republicans about his future testimony. If Biden and Mayorkas don’t like that, then they should adopt better border-control policies and keep Magnus inside the tent. If they did that, perhaps Magnus won’t be inclined to burn it all down.”