Just before a mandate that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 by November 22, Border Patrol had a 79 percent rate of full vaccination. Another 16 percent of agents had pending requests for exemptions from the mandate, much higher than the federal government average, leaving 5 percent unvaccinated or unresponsive. At the Intercept, Ken Klippenstein wrote about agents who resent or are resisting the vaccine mandate. In it, an agent in the Rio Grande Valley sector sent an e-mail to 3,000 colleagues that began, “You said, ‘STOP THE SPREAD!!’ but that should have been our battle cry, ‘STOP THE SPREAD OF ILLEGAL ALIENS INTO THE COUNTRY.”
— Valerie Gonzalez, “Border Patrol prepares to address non-compliant unvaccinated agents” (McAllen: The Monitor, November 27, 2021) https://myrgv.com/featured/2021/11/27/border-patrol-prepares-to-address-non-compliant-unvaccinated-agents/.
— Ken Klippenstein, “The Biden Administration’s Game of Chicken With Border Patrol Over Vaccines” (The Intercept, December 1, 2021) https://theintercept.com/2021/12/01/covid-vaccine-mandate-border-patrol/.