Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: Inside The ‘Penal Platoon’ Hell Marines Found Themselves In After Refusing COVID Jab

(U.S. Marine Corps photo)

One moment he was refusing the COVID vaccine, the next, Marine Cruz Marquis suddenly found himself placed in a “penal platoon” for his commitment to individual liberty.

“This isn’t a story about me,” Marquis told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview. “This isn’t a story about any particular individuals who defied a government order. In my mind, this is about a slice of life, a slice of what the state was able to do and what they were able to get away with during the pandemic. This story, though it may be reported, is just the tip of the iceberg of what kind of repression the state was able to reap during the COVID pandemic.”

The Biden administration imposed a military-wide COVID-19 vaccine mandate in 2021, forcing service members to choose between receiving the shot or risking disciplinary action and separation. Thousands were ultimately discharged for refusing the vaccine, and Marquis says his refusal carried consequences that went far beyond simply ending his Marine Corps career.

Marquis was assigned to Lima Company at the School of Infantry-West at Camp Pendleton when he refused the COVID-19 vaccine. He was later transferred to the school’s Legal and Separations Platoon while being processed out of the Marine Corps, a unit Marquis described as a “penal platoon.”

“There was an enormous number of junior Marines who stated at the very beginning that they were looking to deny the COVID shot in direct violation of orders from the president,” Marquis told the DCNF. “It was enormous, I tell you.”

SOI-West’s Separations Platoon serves as a holding unit for Marines awaiting completion of the administrative separation process, according to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps confirmed to the DCNF that Marquis was assigned to SOI-West and later separated from the school, but did not clarify whether that referred to his discharge from the Marine Corps or simply his separation from SOI-West.

The military later began unwinding some of those penalties. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 that allowed service members who were discharged solely for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine to seek reinstatement at their former rank with full back pay, benefits and other compensation. Despite those efforts, former service members affected by the mandate continue fighting over discharges, military records, lost benefits and other consequences stemming from their refusal to take the vaccine.

‘I’ll Always Remember That Day’

The Marine Corps made refusal costly. Its mandatory vaccination order declared the requirement a lawful general order and said violations could be punished under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Marines without an approved or pending exemption were later ordered into administrative separation proceedings.

Marquis formally rejected the COVID vaccine on Oct. 5, 2021.

“[Over a] few weeks, the military bureaucracy got to work, and by hook or by crook, almost everyone was persuaded to go along with [taking the COVID vaccine],” Marquis told the DCNF. “Hundreds of Marines, specifically at Lima Company, who were looking to deny the COVID shot, got whittled down to somewhere around 20.”

“One sergeant even suggested I should be shot for doing this,” Marquis told the DCNF. He explained that the incident was not reported to his superiors as Marquis and his fellow Marines were already under significant pressure from officers.

Religious objections were widespread but rarely approved. By June 2022, the Marine Corps had received 3,719 religious accommodation requests and approved just seven, while 2,715 Marines had already been separated with a vaccine-refusal discharge code, according to an official Marine Corps update.

“On October 21st, I’ll always remember that day because it was the day I turned 21. I was placed in the legal and separations platoon at a Lima Company in SOI (School of Infantry) West,” Marquis told the DCNF. “It’s amazing. I turned 21 in essentially a penal platoon. Very unfortunate, and there were very bad men in there, very violent men, men committed very serious crimes, from the sense of it, and this was a very negative experience. Certainly, the worst thing that had ever happened to me in my life, up until that point and since.”

“I stayed in there [the legal separation platoon] over Christmas. [I] certainly was not granted leave when all the other junior Marines who had their COVID vaccines were sent home,” Marquis said. “So we spent Christmas there and usually just did hard labor for most of the day, which is very standard in the Marines. That’s totally fine, but it’s quite a way to spend Christmas. I stayed there until April 1st of 2022, when I was finally processed out with a discharge reflecting general under honorable conditions.”

Conditions in the platoon were restrictive and increasingly tense, pay was reduced, phones were temporarily confiscated and Marines were barred from leaving the base, Marquis said.

“The atmosphere of fear was completely pervasive,” Marquis told the DCNF. “On one occasion, I got beat up … At one point, a junior Marine went essentially crazy and built improvised explosive devices and tried to kill the people who were in the squad bay there. It’s honestly even hard to talk about … bomb squad rushed in, and that was the most terrifying experience of my entire life. The bomb squad told one of my friends … that if those devices [had] been activated. It would have killed every Marine in the squad bay.”

The U.S. Marine Corps was unable to locate any records on the incident with the improvised explosive device; however, the DCNF was able to independently confirm the incident with three sources familiar with the matter.

“An inmate there was suspected of committing sex crimes against other Marines,” Marquis told the DCNF. “His actions there produced a spirit of fear that it’s honestly very hard to even talk about.”

A Marine legal platoon can include service members facing both administrative separation and disciplinary proceedings. In a 1995 case, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals described a Marine legal platoon as consisting of personnel awaiting administrative discharge or disciplinary action, while a more recent Camp Pendleton case involved a Marine transferred to a legal and separations platoon with restrictions on his liberty after he was suspected of shoplifting.

The Marine Corps ultimately separated 3,717 Marines under the vaccine-refusal discharge code before the mandate was rescinded, according to an official December 2022 Marine Corps update. At the time, Marines who refused the vaccine without an approved or pending exemption could also be barred from reenlisting, have promotions delayed and be reassigned while awaiting separation.

“Some people decided that they would follow the religious exemption process, which was Kafkaesque, by the way, and there were mixed results from that,” Marquis told the DCNF. “Some people let the cases against them proceed and just let the chips fall where they may. Others decided that the best way to avert punishment would be to say that they were suicidal. A number of Marines did that. At one point, one of my friends actually did cut his wrists. That was a very scary thing … me and a friend of mine bandaged him up.“

“A fourth group was under the impression that if we let the cases against us proceed until the point where it would be formally charged, we might end up doing hard time in Leavenworth [a military prison]; that was what the fear was,” Marquis told the DCNF. “As there was a real fear and uncertainty as to what was going to happen, I was in that fourth category.”

“President Trump was proud to rightfully reinstate all members of the military who were unjustly fired by the Biden administration for refusing the COVID vaccine,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told the DCNF. “There is no greater champion for the brave men and women in uniform who proudly serve our nation than President Trump.” 

Trump’s executive order did pave the way to reinstatement for some members of the U.S. military, but the path was not straightforward for all who were separated from the armed forces.

“I have been fighting for reinstatement for the past 19 months, even after the Army’s own correction process determined that an injustice occurred in my case,” U.S. Army Maj. Mike Gary told the DCNF. “Adverse actions affected my career, my reputation, my pay and benefits, and ultimately my continued military service. Even after the Army Board for Correction of Military Records found an injustice and removed adverse material from my record.”

“Service members may request exemptions to any required vaccines through a service-level process,” a Department of War official told the DCNF. “We would refer to the respective military services departments for further, service-specific information.”

Marine Corps policy specifically barred the service from giving an enlisted Marine anything worse than a general discharge under honorable conditions when vaccine refusal was the sole basis for separation, according to official guidance issued in October 2021.

“When people ask me whether the military went too far, I point to what happened afterward,” Gary told the DCNF. “Years later, people like me are still trying to repair careers and records and obtain the relief that subsequent administrative and policy actions recognized was necessary. My case is an example of how correcting a piece of paper does not automatically restore the years of a person’s career that were lost.”

“For me, this isn’t an abstract debate about COVID policy anymore,” Gary said. “It is about what happens when the government damages a service member’s career and then makes that service member spend years fighting the same bureaucracy to actually receive the correction and relief they were granted.”

The Department of War later reached out to Marquis with an offer to amend his discharge documentation to an honorable discharge; however, that does not undo the time that Marquis spent in the “penal platoon” for nearly half a year.

Marquis said he objected to being classified as having “refused to train” and raised the issue with the Lima Company sergeant major, who offered to help expedite his administrative separation with an unfavorable discharge characterization. Marquis was not dishonorably discharged, however, and said he declined the offer so he could remain in the platoon and continue challenging the vaccine mandate.

“While the military has rescinded specific recent mandates like the COVID-19 vaccine, the overall policy governing standard service immunizations remains in effect,” a Marine Corps spokesperson told the DCNF. “Refusal of any mandatory military immunization without an officially approved medical, religious, or administrative waiver constitutes a violation of a lawful order and may result in disciplinary action including administrative separation or UCMJ action.”

‘Disaster’

Marquis was justified in his decision to refuse an unlawful order, and that similar violations of civil liberty still go on to this day, multiple legal experts told the DCNF.

“They have a right to object,” First Liberty Senior Counsel Chris Motz told the DCNF. “For objections based on religious grounds, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act gives strong protections, and requires the government to prove it has an interest in health and safety not just as a general concept, but as specifically applied to the individual objector, and that there are no other ways besides vaccination for it to satisfy that specific interest. This is a rigorous standard for the government to meet and often results in accommodations being granted, but not all the time. We are still seeing some vaccine accommodation requests being denied.”

“The Pentagon severely compromised operational readiness to enforce bureaucratic conformity,” Marcus Thornton, the Co-Founder of Feds For Freedom, told the DCNF. “Purging thousands of highly trained, specialized assets was a massive, self-inflicted vulnerability. Secretary Hegseth deserves credit for initiating necessary corrections to this disaster, but his efforts have not gone nearly far enough.”

More than 8,400 U.S. service members were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine before the Pentagon rescinded its military-wide mandate in January 2023, including 3,717 Marines, 2,041 sailors, 1,841 soldiers and 834 members of the Air Force and Space Force, according to Military Times, citing service data compiled in December 2022.

Only about 230, roughly 2.7% of those eligible, had rejoined by July 2026, Military Times reported, citing the Pentagon.

“Service members may seek medical exemptions and religious accommodations,” a Michigan for Vaccine Choice spokesperson told the DCNF. “[Department of War] policy incorporates RFRA: a sincere religious belief must be accommodated unless the military shows a compelling interest and the least restrictive means. Medical contraindications are also recognized. A mandate does not erase those rights.”

“Service members do not surrender their constitutional rights when they put on the uniform,” Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, told the DCNF. “Both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act require the military to give every sincere religious objection a fair, individualized hearing, and during the COVID-19 mandate, that didn’t happen.”

“I understand the military has legitimate responsibilities around readiness and protecting the force, but those responsibilities should not come at the expense of basic rights and meaningful due process,” Brianne Dressen, the co-chair of React 19, told the DCNF. “Service members who raised legitimate medical, religious, or conscience-based objections should have had their individual circumstances genuinely considered, rather than facing career-ending consequences simply for refusing one medical intervention.”

The military’s handling of religious exemptions also drew repeated legal challenges. In 2022, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction protecting 35 Navy special warfare personnel who challenged the service’s handling of their religious accommodation requests, while other federal courts separately intervened in similar cases involving service members.

“Congress must enact explicit legal protections for both military and civilian federal workers that strictly prohibit blanket medical mandates which evade strict constitutional scrutiny,” Thornton told the DCNF. “We also need mandatory constitutional training for managers and commanders, coupled with severe, enforceable personal liability. When government leaders and managers violate the constitutional rights of their subordinates or the American people, they must face direct legal and financial consequences equal in impact to the consequences of their violations against others.”

While Trump’s command of the U.S. military did roll back changes made under the Biden administration, the significant lack of service members who were ousted by COVID requirements returning shows that it left a lasting impact on the armed forces.

“What this signals is that the state has allocated to itself a power that is entirely unheard of in American history until relatively recently,” Marquis told the DCNF. “This shows that the state, now that we’ve given it this power, is going to use it again.”

“People might say that COVID was five years ago, it doesn’t matter anymore, but that’s categorically wrong,” Marquis said. “This is more relevant than ever because now that the state has precedent for doing this. They’re going to do it again, and the next time it will be worse. They will keep pushing the envelope, keep expanding their power, and it is up to vigilant citizenry to try to interdict this in a peaceful but forceful manner before the liberties that we’ve cherished and passed on from generation to generation are lost to history.”