Ousted Border Patrol chief tells Glenn Beck how Biden's vaccine mandate threatens border security
At a time when border security is now "worse than ever," retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott warns that nearly half of the federal government's Border Patrol agents could face termination because of President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Scott, a 29-year veteran of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was pushed out of the Biden administration in June after objecting to President Joe Biden's immigration policies, which he felt were making the border less secure and jeopardizing national security. In an interview with BlazeTV host Glenn Beck on Wednesday, he said that since Biden assumed office the state of the border has dramatically deteriorated and could be made even worse if Border Patrol agents are fired for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate.
Scott told Beck he's heard from sources in the agency that as many as 10,000 agents "are on the chopping block right now" because only 52% of agents have submitted their vaccination status. The other 48% have either not been vaccinated or haven't yet told CBP if they've gotten shots. Scott said the mandate has caused a "huge problem" and that agents attempting to receive a religious exemption are having a "nightmare" securing one.
He also criticized the Biden administration's "hypocrisy" for requiring Border Patrol agents to get COVID-19 vaccinations while at the same time "hundreds, if not thousands of illegal aliens being released into the U.S." and "they're never COVID-tested by the federal government."
"They're supposedly COVID-tested by non-governmental agencies helping them get to their final destination, but no vaccine mandate because it's not legal. You can't force it on them," said Scott.
President Biden announced new regulations in September that will require federal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and private-sector employees at companies with 100 or more employees to get vaccinated or face regular testing for the virus in order to keep their jobs. The mandate is estimated to impact 100 million Americans and has caused several industries to experience staffing shortages as vaccine-hesitant workers have quit or been fired.
Several Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the Biden administration's mandate, raising concerns that the loss of thousands of Border Patrol agents would exacerbate the crisis on the southern border.
On Tuesday, 62 House Republicans wrote a letter to Biden urging his administration to suspend the federal vaccine mandates. The lawmakers pointed out there were a record 1.7 million migrant encounters at the southern border in FY 2021, leaving Border Patrol and other immigration enforcement officials overwhelmed.
"Despite these staffing issues, thousands of Border Patrol agents are at risk of losing their jobs because of your ill-conceived policy," the Republicans wrote. "This mandate is wholly incongruent with the principles of individual choice and medical freedom, puts families in our districts at risk of financial ruin, and threatens our national security by flooding our communities with undocumented, unvetted migrants."
And last Thursday, National Border Council President Brandon Judd told Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), an Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) the U.S. is "in the largest border security crisis that we've ever faced in our nation's history."
"We can't afford to lose any of our employees. One would be too many," said Judd, speaking at a press conference held by Blackburn for the Keeping Our COVID-19 Heroes Employed Act — a bill that would prevent "essential workers," including federal law enforcement agents, from being fired for refusing to get vaccinated.
Judd said that over 6,000 CBP employees have asked for exemptions to the vaccine mandate.
Explaining the severity of the border crisis to Glenn Beck, Scott said the Biden administration's policies have made the border less secure than it was under the Obama administration. He pointed to Biden's order to stop construction of a border wall as a particularly damaging and wasteful policy.
"That new border wall was replacing barriers that had been built in 2006 and even before that were predated, but they were still there. But to replace them, you had to remove them," said Scott. "So now the border has more vulnerabilities than even before because construction stopped midstream."
Scott told Beck he believes the Biden administration forced him to retire because he objected to policies he felt were weakening border security and because he was not comfortable misleading the public and lawmakers about the state of the border.
"I sat in meetings, and this was part of the reason that I ended up retired, I believe, and pushed back about press releases that were going out. Everything from the numbers of people that were being released into the U.S., the COVID testing. I was on calls where individual at DHS told a congressional representative that everybody being released in a certain geographic area on the border was being COVID-tested, which they were trying to put a plan in place to do that," said Scott.
"Not a single one of them was being COVID-tested. So I had to go behind the scenes and fix that and make sure that representative knew what the truth was. But there were too many issues like that where people were saying, government officials, new political appointees, were saying things they wanted to be true, but they weren't true yet. And I just could not support that."
He also emphasized that while the wall and illegal immigration issues are important, the real national security threat is that mass migration on the southern border "overwhelms the Border Patrol agents," uses up the federal government's resources, and permits drug cartels, human traffickers, and even terrorist threats to cross into the U.S.
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Ousted Border Chief EXPOSES Biden's 'Horrific' Border Agenda | Glenn TV | Ep 150 www.youtube.com
Border Patrol chief bucks Biden effort to scrub 'alien,' 'illegal': 'Further erode public trust'
Rodney Scott, chief of the United States Border Patrol, pushed back against the Biden administration's vocabulary changes related to immigration in a recent memo, citing contradictions with U.S. law and the impact such politically motivated changes would have on his officers.
What is the background?
The Biden administration last week ordered Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to abandon words like "alien," "illegal," and "assimilation" when talking about migrants or immigration.
Instead, officials were directed to use words like "noncitizen or migrant," "undocumented," and "integration." CBP top official Troy Miller said the lexical changes are necessary to protect the dignity of immigrants. "The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody," Miller said.
What did Scott say?
Prior to the administration's directive, Scott wrote Miller bucking the vocabulary changes, writing on April 16 that he would not "endorse" the changes.
Breitbart Texas first obtained Scott's letter.
"Rationale: The U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is and must remain an apolitical federal law enforcement agency. Over the years, many outside forces on both extremes of the political spectrum have intentionally, or unintentionally politicized our agency and our mission," Scott wrote.
"Despite every attempt by USBP leadership to ensure that all official messaging remained consistent with law, fact, and evidence, there is no doubt that the reputation of the USBP has suffered because of the many outside voices," he continued. "Mandating the use of terms which are inconsistent with law has the potential to further erode public trust in our government institutions."
In fact, Scott said he worried politically motivated changes would impact the willingness of Border Patrol officers to serve sacrificially if they know the shifting political winds in Washington will micromanage them in the midst of a migrant crisis.
Scott wrote:
I am also concerned about the morale of our workforce. To be clear, when I reference morale, I am not referring to an employee's happiness. I am referring to an individual's willingness to take personal risk each day to keep others safe. There are countless human capital studies which indicate that mission criticality and support from leadership affect the willingness of personnel to comply with policy and professional standards.
I respectfully recommend that we delay these changes until the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 is enacted and then adjust appropriately.
What does the law say?
As Scott indicated, the law defines terms related to immigrants differently than the Biden administration's guidance dictates. Currently, U.S. law uses the term "alien" to describe "any person not a citizen or national of the United States."
In fact, critics of the lexical changes have even noted that despite efforts to change immigration vocabulary, the prohibited terms would still need to be used on legal documents.
The Washington Post reported:
In the past, officials and some federal judges have defended using "alien" because it is the official definition of noncitizen in federal laws. Officials acknowledge that officials may need to use the terms in "legal or operational documents," such as when filling out required forms.
However, the Biden administration plans to change that.
The U.S. Citizenship Act 2021, President Joe Biden's aggressive immigration reform bill, would formally change the definition in U.S. law for non-citizen immigrants from "alien" to "noncitizen.
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Ousted Border Patrol Chief Describes ‘HORRIFYING’ Threats to U.S. | The Glenn Beck Program