Biden's own ICE director reveals what he would REALLY like to tell the departing president

President Joe Biden's own ICE director revealed what he would have liked the departing commander in chief to do - as officers struggled to control the influx of migrants coming through the southern border.  

Patrick Lechleitner, the outgoing director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared on Fox & Friends Thursday, when he said he wished the president imposed his executive order to shut down the border years earlier.

'I would have liked to see that executive order they implemented roughly just over a year ago, like that helped a lot,' Lechleitner said of Biden's order in June to temporarily suspend entry of non-citizens once the number of average border encounters exceeded 2,500 a day over seven days.

'And we could have gotten that implemented a long time before that. It would have helped a lot.'

When Fox News host Steve Doocy then asked Lechleitner why he thought Biden did not take action earlier, the ICE director replied he did not know.

'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.

'I know it was in process for a long time. I would have liked to see it earlier.

'I think it helped a lot, it did really help our mission, but I wanted to see that earlier,' he added of the order, which stayed in effect until two weeks after there was an average of less than 1,500 encounters along the border.

Lechleitner's remarks come after an explosive investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed that agency heads often did not get to meet with the president or speak with him one-on-one.

Instead, many were relegated to only speaking with some of his staffers in a years-long cover-up of Biden's deteriorating mental health.

The officials who stood in included counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard.

Some of Biden's lower-level staff have even griped that this secretive 'triumvirate' – also known as the 'Biden whisperers' – developed an outsized influence over America's oldest ever president.

Among those who said they were unable to meet directly with the president was Rep. Jim Himes, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

He told the Journal he has been focused for two years on getting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes broad national security surveillance powers, reauthorized.

But, he said, he would only meet with Biden's senior advisers and other top administration officials - never Biden himself.

'I really had no personal contact with this president,' said Himes, who took office in 2009. 'I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior.'

Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent, also said he noticed that the president lacked stamina and often relied on his staff during his time at the White House.

'I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,' Manchin said. 'The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.'

Rep. Adam Smith, of Washington, also said he was concerned by what he saw as the Biden administration's overly-optimistic comments about the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan.

'I was begging them to set expectations low,' Smith recounted of his conversations with the Biden administration.

He said he tried to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the Middle East, but was never able to get on the phone with him. 

But Biden's mental decline became increasingly obvious, especially after Special Counsel Robert Hur last year released a report depicting a forgetful and frail then-81 year old. 

Hur decided not to charge Biden for keeping classified documents in his Delaware garage because he 'would likely present himself to a jury' as a 'sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.'

Then by late June this year, Biden's decline was on full display when he debated Donald Trump.

Gaffes, fumbles and blank stares from the president filled the hour-and-a-half televised event. It proved catastrophic for his campaign.

The face-off with Trump is what ultimately led the public, and even senior Democrats in Washington, to call for Biden to end his bid for reelection.

A month after the debate, Biden threw in the towel and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris, who Trump nonetheless defeated on November 5.

Yet White House spokesman Andrew Bates refuted the Wall Street Journal's account that Biden has declined. 

Instead, Bates said that he has 'earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander in chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives.