Border patrol agents who’ve devoted their careers to protecting the U.S. now face termination if they refuse to get COVID-19 vaccinations by November, even as the Biden administration refuses to mandate vaccination for those entering the U.S. illegally.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) sent DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a letter Tuesday expressing incredulity that “the Biden administration will allow COVID-positive illegal aliens to surge across the border but will terminate dedicated law-enforcement officers who do not comply” with a presidential mandate.
“The Biden border crisis continues to worsen as illegal aliens stream across the southwest border as a result of President Biden’s and your radical immigration policies,” they write.
“As the brave men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol work tirelessly to respond to the Administration’s manufactured border crisis,” they write, DHS is threatening to terminate a significant number of agents who refuse to comply.
On top of the dangerous nature of their jobs, they argue, the agents’ jobs are made even harder “when senior officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, spread false accusations of cruelty, as has occurred in recent days to mounted officers in Del Rio, while ignoring reports of attacks against Border Patrol personnel.”
Biden’s mandate “risks reducing the already-depleted Border Patrol workforce in the middle of the unfolding border crisis,” they add.
More than 1.2 million illegals have been apprehended coming across the southern border, and none have been subject to a vaccine mandate. Several hundred thousand more have evaded capture.
“Under the Biden Administration, illegal migrants are not tested for COVID-19 or faced with vaccine mandate,” Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), a former Texas Secretary of State, argues. “But American workers can be fined or fired for not getting the vaccine. President Biden cares more about illegal immigrants than the safety and security of Americans.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News that “the Biden administration cares far more about people who are not in this country than he does about American citizens who live in this country.”
Abbott has said that Texas will hire any border patrol agent fired by the administration.
Following President BIden’s announcement of mandatory vaccination for employees in companies with 100 or more employees, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked why the same requirement did not apply to illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border.
“Our objective is to get as many people vaccinated as humanly possible,” Psaki said. “The president’s announcement yesterday was an effort to empower businesses to give businesses the tools to protect their workforces. That’s exactly what we did.”
