By Jennie Taer
Published Oct. 15, 2024, 2:10 p.m. ET
Border patrol agents are threatening to leave the critical federal agency in droves if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November — with multiple agents telling The Post that they can’t face four more years of being undermined and scapegoated.
“I’m not doing this s–t again … four years of hell,” said one agent, who is nowhere near retirement.
Another agent said: “Lots of guys who can retire will go. If Trump wins, they’ll stay.”
On Monday the Border Patrol union, National Border Patrol Council, endorsed former President Donald Trump.The video player is currently playing an ad.
The Border Patrol has suffered massive turnover and plummeting morale under the Biden-Harris administration, insiders say.
The agency has shed more than 4,000 personnel since October 2020, leaving about 19,000 employees, according to the Washington Examiner.
Enticements like increasing recruitment incentives from $10,000 to up to $30,000 and encouraging retired agents to return have not filled the gap.
Both Trump and Harris have pledged to beef up the Border Patrol, with the Republican nominee making the announcement Sunday about increasing force by one-third or 10,000 new agents.
But multiple agents, who talked to the Post anonymously for fear of backlash from their bosses, said that Harris is likely to take office with a massive staffing crisis at the agency if she is elected.
“We will have another exodus just because we will have a bunch of 20-year agents saying peace out,” one agent said.
He also believes the more experienced agents — with five to 10 years on the job, who do much of the grunt work of the Border Patrol — will use their skills to get other jobs.
“We will have another exodus just because we will have a bunch of 20-year agents saying peace out,” the agent said.
The agent who isn’t close to retirement said he was “absolutely sure” he would leave the Border Patrol if Harris is leading the government.
“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,” said one of the agents.
The tanking morale led the agency to hire its first suicidologist to help combat the surging suicide rate among Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol.
In 2022, the agency recorded a record 15 suicides.
“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 Border Patrol agents and law enforcement,” former Yuma Border Patrol Chief Chris Clem previously told The Post.
“Kamala Harris has been bad for morale, for not only law enforcement around the country, but also for our border security personnel.”
The number of migrant encounters nationwide under the Biden-Harris admin have surpassed 10 million, according to federal data.
Illegal crossings have hit new lows in recent months following new restrictions on asylum at the US-Mexico border.
Border Patrol agents stationed at the US-Mexico border saw roughly 56,000 crossings in July; 58,000 in August; and 54,000 in September — down from 250,000 in December 2023.
