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Patrick Lechleitner, the acting — and outgoing — director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), joined Fox & Friends on Thursday where he criticized President Joe Biden’s failure to address the crisis at the southern border in a timely fashion.

Brian Kilmeade kicked off the conversation by noting, “You guys [ICE] are going to get a lot of attention. There’s going to be a lot of money flowing your direction and a chance to build up the force.”

“How much is needed?” he asked.

“Well, to do what the new administration is proposing and what we’re seeing, you know, because the working for the transition, we’re going to need a lot more people, a lot more resources,” replied Lechleitner. “Because, you know, if you double what we have currently, then we’re going to need double the money, you know, to do that.”

“You put a lot of time into this agency over 30 years. You’ve served different administrations, Republican and Democrat. What was the biggest challenge with this administration?” followed up Lawrence Jones.

“Well, it’s always a challenge understanding kind of where the administration wants to go and what their priorities are. And whenever administrations change, you’ve got to adapt to that, right? And the workforce just wants to do their job,” said Lehchleitner. “They just want to be told, go

out, do your job, and do it well. And one of the problems and the issues is, is just kind of communicating that from the leadership side, like keep your head down, keep doing your job, don’t worry about it, we got your back.”

“You’re talking about how the incoming administration is going to take a lot more money because of different priorities. [Donald] Trump’s priorities different than Joe Biden’s, obviously. And you were talking about the workforce where, you know, we’ve heard from ICE agents. They were frustrated that they didn’t get to do their job,” offered Steve Doocy. “So as the new administration comes in and suddenly removing criminal aliens is going to be a priority. If you had one do-over, or if Joe Biden would have ever called you on the phone and say, ‘P.J., what should ICE be doing?’ What would you say to him?”

“I would have liked to see that executive order they implemented roughly just over a year ago, like that helped a lot. And we could have gotten that implemented a long time before that,” answered Lechleitner. “It would have helped a lot.”

“Why didn’t they, why didn’t they do it earlier?” asked Doocy.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. And I’m you know,

I execute. I run the agency, I execute, I enforce. But I don’t know why they didn’t do that earlier,” replied the retiring director. “I know it was in process for a long time. I would have liked to seen it earlier. I think it helped a lot, it did did really help our mission, but I wanted to see that earlier.”

Watch above via Fox News.

Tags: Border crisis, Ice, immigration, Joe Biden, Patrick Lechleitner