Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official who was the public face of the Trump administration’s military-style immigration crackdown in cities across the country, is expected to retire at the end of the month.
“The greatest honor of my entire life was to work alongside Border Patrol agents on the border and in the interior of the United States in some of the most challenging conditions the agency has ever faced,” Bovino told Breitbart.
“Watching these agents out there giving it their all in some of the most dangerous of environments we have ever faced was humbling.”
For much of the first year of the Trump administration, Bovino served as commander-at-large of the Border Patrol’s roving operations in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, where agents often clashed with members of the public and were frequently accused of excessive force and racial profiling against immigrants and citizens alike, which they denied.
Bovino returned to his position as chief patrol agent in the El Centro sector of California in January, after federal agents involved in the Minneapolis operation fatally shot two American citizens.
“Chief Bovino has not submitted any retirement paperwork,” the Department of Homeland Security told The Independent in a statement.
Critics celebrated Bovino’s impending exit from the border agency, which comes as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is also set to leave this month after a season of controversy.
“Greg Bovino won’t just get to walk away — he will be held accountable and responsible for the damage he's done to our nation,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote on X. “We won’t forget, and neither should you. No one is above the law.”
Bovino is among the federal agents who is reportedly under investigation by local authorities for the Minnesota operation. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, has also reportedly opened an internal investigation into whether Bovino made disparaging remarks about the faith of a Jewish federal prosecutor in Minnesota.
Backers praised Bovino’s service.
“You’re a true patriot, and MILLIONS of Americans are grateful for you,” conservative activist Nick Sortor wrote on X.
Over the course of the military-style campaign, Bovino used what he called “turn and burn" tactics, deploying large numbers of agents to cities to conduct aggressive, mass raids.
In the course of such operations, Border Patrol agents carried out raids hundreds of miles from the border, while almost universally wearing face masks. They also adopted other unusual moves, including in one operation where they leapt out of an unmarked box truck to make arrests in a Home Depot parking lot, and another where Border Patrol troops conducted what appeared to be a symbolic show of force as mounted troops marched through Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park.
In Chicago, a federal judge restrained Border Patrol agents from using certain types of force and accused Bovino of repeatedly lying about officers’ tactics.
As The Independent uncovered, elite agents who traveled alongside Bovino from city to city wore personal pairs of Meta AI sunglasses, at times using them to record members of the public even though this violates government policy, alarming surveillance experts.
Bovino himself appeared to have a flair for publicity, saluting members of the public from his car in Chicago and at times donning an unusual mid-1900s military great coat, both gestures critics alleged were reminiscent of fascist leaders.
On social media, the Border Patrol and ICE alike during Bovino’s tenure regularly used memes, AI, and action-movie-style filmmaking to tout DHS operations, in what experts told The Independent was a PR campaign reminiscent of “fascist propaganda.”
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