(NewsNation) — With immigration encounters at the southwest border receding from last year’s all-time highs, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz says now is as good a time as any to end his 32-year career.

Ortiz, who was named chief in August 2021, will retire at the end of June.

During his tenure, Ortiz oversaw a federal agency that encountered a record high number of migrants at the southern U.S. border in 2022. It also had to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and recently, the end of Title 42, a health policy that allowed migrants to be expelled at the border.

“I feel like we’ve got the border in as managed a state as we’ve had it in years,” Ortiz said Thursday on “CUOMO.” “So, if any time after 32 years, I do think it’s a good time to pull the plug.”

Despite an expected uptick after the May 11 expiration of Title 42, migrant encounters last month dropped 15% from the year before. The Border Patrol is projecting around 90,000 encounters in June, which would be the lowest monthly total since January 2021.

Immigration became of a focal point of Republicans’ campaigns in the 2022 midterm elections, and local officials in border town have called on the Biden administration to devote federal resources to shoring up security.

The president visited the border earlier this year, and the State and Homeland Security departments have launched an initiative to set up migrant processing centers in Latin America to stem the flow.

Along with infrastructure and technology improvements at the border, Ortiz hopes the government will make an investment in Border Patrol to hire more agents. The agency has roughly 3,000 fewer officers than it did in 2013, he said, which is “not a recipe for success.”

“I think we have to sit down, both sides of the aisle, and come up with a solution,” he said. “You’re always going to have migration. We’ve been around for 99 years, and so migration is just part of the recipe, but it doesn’t have to be like it has been for the last few years.”