Rodney Scott seems like the kind of guy you’d follow into battle. A 29-year veteran of our nation’s Customs and Border Patrol agency, Scott has served as head of the Border Patrol since last year. He takes the national security part of his job seriously, and he expects the 19,000 agents under him to do the same.

Which is probably why Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas forced him out in late June.

In what appears to be a farewell video address to his agents, Scott told them that what they’re facing on the southern border is more than just an immigration crisis. He said, in part:

Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis. … I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right now, it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat.

The TSDBs Scott refers to are known or suspected terrorists — those who are on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database — and his note to his agents confirms what House Homeland Security Committee ranking member John Katko said during a hearing in March: that four terror watchlist matches — three from Yemen and one from Syria — were picked up earlier this year.

And terrorists being like cockroaches, we wonder just how many slipped across the border undetected, especially given the unprecedented chaos caused by the Biden administration’s “open borders” approach to border security. Or perhaps these four chaps were just passing through the U.S. on their way to Canada.

On the other hand, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is less than a month away. And given that terrorists tend to have a sentimental side for important anniversaries, maybe they’re plotting something.

In any case, if any Americans are harmed on 9/11, the finger of blame will be pointing squarely at our commander-in-chief, Joe Biden — whose abject failure to secure our nation’s southern border has been rightly called by members of Congress an impeachable offense. (Some say Biden’s immigration policy has been a failure, but in the sense that it’s attempting to remake the American electorate with future Democrat voters, we think it’s working precisely as planned.)

In a Facebook post Scott directed to his agents shortly after having received his “3R” notice (a notification that tells senior-level federal employees to resign, relocate, or retire), he said: “A huge thank you to all those who have reached out, prayed and supported me and my family, especially over these last few crazy months. I remain confident that God is in control. And … over 29 yrs is a pretty good run!”

Twenty-nine years is indeed a good run, but the Biden administration’s decision to replace such a vital piece of our border security apparatus at this crucial time seems not only purely political but wholly inexcusable.