The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is issuing a warning about the possibility of an anti-vaccination mandate convoy of truckers set to cause interruptions across the United States.
The announcement comes as Americans anticipate the highly publicized Super Bowl weekend. On Tuesday, February 8, DHS issued a bulletin alerting state and local officials that it "has received reports of truck drivers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers."
The leaked bulletin, initially reported by Yahoo! News, also offers details about where the convoy could begin and how long it could potentially last.
“The convoy will potentially begin in California as early as mid-February and arrive in Washington, D.C., as late as mid-March, potentially impacting the Super Bowl LVI scheduled for 13 February and the State of the Union Address scheduled for 1 March,” according to the bulletin.
Although violence is not a DHS concern at the moment, the bulletin does highlight the possibility of other adverse effects that could be problematic in the coming weeks.
"While there are currently no indications of planned violence, if hundreds of trucks converge in a major metropolitan city, the potential exists to severely disrupt transportation," the bulletin continued, "federal government operations, commercial facilities, and emergency services through gridlock and potential counterprotests."
Speaking to CNN, a spokesperson for DHS confirmed that the federal agency "is tracking reports of a potential convoy that may be planning to travel to several U.S. cities. We have not observed specific calls for violence within the United States associated with this convoy, and are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners to continuously assess the threat environment and keep our communities safe."
The DHS warning comes as truckers have pushed back against COVID vaccine mandates in Canada. Per CNN, the Canadian vaccination mandate requires truckers to be "fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or face a two-week quarantine in their homes after they return across the US-Canadian border."