Border Patrol agents threatened to stage a mass "exodus" from the agency if Kamala Harris wins the White House in November, saying they won't stick around for another "four years of hell."
"I’m not doing this s—t again … four years of hell," one agent told the New York Post.
"Lots of guys who can retire will go. If Trump wins, they’ll stay," another agent added.
Harris, who has been President Joe Biden’s point person on immigration, has been largely criticized for her handling of the southern border, as more than 10 million illegal immigrants have come into the country under her watch. Border Patrol agents—who talked to the Post anonymously for fear of backlash from their bosses—expressed frustration with the Biden-Harris administration's open-border policies that have let known criminals enter the country.
"Under this administration, they’ve done everything they could to make our job as inefficient as possible. They can’t outwardly tell us not to do our job, but when you’re watching criminals come in and get released, it sucks," one agent said.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, Border Patrol lost a quarter of its workforce, and twice as many agents chose to retire early compared to the retirement rate under the Trump administration, the Washington Examiner reported.
"We will have another exodus just because we will have a bunch of 20-year agents saying peace out," one agent said, adding that he was "absolutely sure" he would leave Border Patrol if Harris becomes the next commander in chief.
Although Harris has, since becoming the Democratic nominee, vowed to hire more Border Patrol agents and continue construction of former president Donald Trump’s border wall, which she previously described as "un-American," multiple agents told the Post that Harris would still likely face a tremendous staffing crisis at the border if she is elected.
"The morale has never been as low in the Border Patrol, but under the Biden-Harris administration and her current ads, acting like she’s pro-border security is just putting salt on an already gaping wound for the morale of Border Patrol agents and law enforcement," former Yuma Border Patrol chief Chris Clem told the Post, noting that suicides within the agency have sky-rocketed over the last four years.
"Kamala Harris has been bad for morale, for not only law enforcement around the country but also for our border security personnel."
On Monday, the Border Patrol union, which represents 16,000 agents in the National Border Patrol Council, endorsed former president Donald Trump. More than a dozen Border Patrol agents already said in August that they would not vote for Harris in November, warning that the vice president would be "worse than Biden" on the border and she would prolong the four-year-long "nightmare."