Potentially thousands of Border Patrol agents who have refused the COVID-19 vaccine are facing possible dismissal in the coming days by the Biden administration, the Washington Examiner is reporting.
Data from Customs and Border Protection reveals almost 4,000 of the 21,000 total agents were unvaccinated as of late November — just weeks after the government mandated all employees disclose their status.
President Joe Biden ordered all federal workers to be fully vaccinated. The order has faced court challenges. It was put on hold by a court in January. But another court reversed the decision in April.
"That bar is now lifted, and the federal agencies are now clear to proceed with whatever disciplinary actions they were going to move on with respect to unvaccinated people," said John J. Michels Jr., counsel for the Federal Practice Group in Washington. He served as lead counsel in the lawsuit that blocked former President George W. Bush's federal mandate for an anthrax vaccine.
According to the Examiner, the administration is awaiting one more court decision. That decision, which could come as early as Friday, could clear the way for governmental agencies to start penalizing those who are not vaccinated.
One agent told the Examiner: "You're going to try to tell me that after I've been doing this job for two years now in the field that I'm somehow the danger, not the fact that almost every single day, we'll have at least one to maybe four COVID-positive kids come through?"
Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., has introduced a bill to protect service members seeking religious exemptions from Biden's COVID-19 mandate.
Under the bill, service members who are involuntary discharged based on their COVID-19 vaccine status would have their status designated as honorably discharged.
It would also permit them to seek reinstatement and allow them to obtain retirement and benefits.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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