Admirals Demand Answers Over Coast Guard Cadets Allegedly Expelled For Vaccine Exemption Requests

When President Biden declared on “60 Minutes” last week, “The pandemic is over,” he made more of an observation than a declaration. The vast majority of Americans left COVID fear and restrictions behind long ago and have gone back to living their lives in much the same way as they did before 2020.

Yet not everyone has been able to move on. On September 22, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, allegedly discharged seven cadets after denying their requests for religious exemptions to the military’s COVID vaccine mandate. Now, two highly-decorated admirals are demanding to know why.

All between the ages of 18 and 22, the cadets say when their religious exemption appeals were denied on August 18, they were told they must leave campus in less than 24 hours or face being escorted off the grounds by guards. This forced two, who did not have homes to which they could return, to respectively live out of a car and find refuge with another cadet’s family.

“When I tried to explain that I did not have a good home life, and was in tears about having to return to my family, I was simply [asked], ‘Why hadn’t you thought before of what to do if this happened?’” one of the cadets, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, told The Daily Wire. “They told me I needed to patch it up with my family. I was not given any support or offered additional housing opportunities.” When she later contacted the Academy to let them know her family was not, as she’d expected, willing to take her in, she says it took the Academy two days to respond, and then only to tell her to “be ready to engage local law enforcement if needed.”

As the Academy allegedly did not provide the cadets with money for travel, they were obliged to charge hundreds of dollars in unexpected expenses to their credit cards, leaving them in dire financial straits while they waited for reimbursements they say they have yet to receive. They then lived in limbo for over a month after their sudden disenrollment, unclear if they could pursue jobs or other education as they waited to find out their fate with the Coast Guard.

All of this treatment, Ret. Vice Admiral William “Dean” Lee and Ret. Rear Admiral Pete Brown tell The Daily Wire, is unacceptable.

Brown, himself an Academy graduate and former instructor, says it’s becoming harder to be proud of the military branch he served. “The core values on which the Coast Guard ought to be operating are respect and devotion to duty,” he says. “And these are young folks [who] really have a service orientation. They’re trying to do for the country, not trying to take from the country. And that opportunity is now being denied to them for reasons that truly seem arbitrary and capricious.”

Lee, who served as director for the Department of Homeland Security’s Task Force East joint interagency Maritime Counter Narcotics and Alien Migration mission, says the president’s recent comments make the decision even more indefensible.

“When the commander-in-chief himself says the pandemic is over, it’s time to let loose of this stuff and stop talking about it. Stop discharging trained people who want to serve, who are ready to serve. And let’s stop creating these gaps because the gaps equal reduction in readiness.”

Lee points out that one of the cadets, a black, Haitian immigrant, was set to be honored with an award for exemplary leadership, as voted on by his peers. He received the news in an email following his disenrollment. Now that he’s been discharged, he will never receive it.

“That this young man was elected for that leadership award by his company is big deal,” Lee says. “You get voted by your peers if you actually have leadership capability. So is the argument, ‘While we find him to be an extraordinarily capable and suitable leader, we find him unsuitable for military service because he won’t take a shot that is unnecessary and won’t even prevent the disease, as we now know?’”

The Coast Guard’s actions mark a striking difference from other service academies like West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy, which have allowed officers-in-training to remain while the issue makes its way through the courts.

Already, three federal courts have issued injunctions prohibiting the Air Force, Marines, and Navy, from penalizing their service members who have outstanding religious exemption requests. Most recently, on September 16, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the federal government’s request to overturn a lower court order protecting service members from facing disciplinary action over faith-based refusals to take the vaccine. This likely led to the Marines and the Navy deciding to rescind their policies of penalizing service members for claiming religious exemptions.

Even the Department of Defense Inspector General