# Gregory Bovino **Gregory Kent Bovino** (born March 1970) is a retired U.S. Border Patrol chief who became the public face of the second Trump administration's big-city immigration surges in 2025–26. He commanded the operations in **Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and Minneapolis**, under the made-up title "commander-at-large." He was pulled out of Minneapolis in January 2026 after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens there. He retired in March 2026 while under an internal misconduct inquiry. Since then he has reinvented himself as a figure on the transatlantic far right. In late May 2026 he was a billed "VIP Guest" at [[Martin Sellner]]'s second [[Remigration Summit]] in Portugal, and in June he floated a 2028 presidential run. For the KB, Bovino matters because his career runs the whole path the vault traces through [[Remigration]]. He was a field commander executing mass-deportation surges. He became a celebrity built on confrontation video. Then he went to a European identitarian conference and told its organizer that their "ideas mirror each other." ## Career Bovino was born in San Bernardino County, California, and raised in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. He graduated from Western Carolina University (1993) and earned a master's degree at Appalachian State (1996). He joined the Border Patrol in 1996 and was first posted to El Paso. He later served as an assistant chief in the Yuma sector, as patrol agent in charge at Blythe, California (from December 2008), as chief of the **New Orleans sector** (by 2019), and as chief of the **El Centro sector** (by 2021). On July 12, 2023, under the Biden administration, he was relieved of the El Centro command within hours of a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee, and he was reinstated on August 25. Committee Republicans alleged retaliation; CBP denied it. What he told the committee was never made public. At El Centro he built a social-media persona before he had a national platform. The sector's media team produced dramatic videos of migrants as threats and staged photos of the chief with an AR-15 and on a white horse with a shotgun, per CalMatters. He called it the "Premiere Sector" and praised [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], whose 1954 [[Operation Wetback]] began in El Centro. **The template: Kern County, January 2025.** The day after Congress certified Trump's 2024 victory, El Centro agents ran a three-day sweep in Kern County, 300 miles away, which Bovino named "Operation Return to Sender." They detained day laborers and farmworkers at a Home Depot, outside a convenience store and along a highway. Bovino said agents had a "predetermined list of targets." Border Patrol's own records, obtained by CalMatters, showed 77 of the 78 people arrested had no prior record with the agency. On **April 29, 2025**, Judge Jennifer Thurston granted the United Farm Workers a preliminary injunction barring stops without reasonable suspicion and warrantless arrests without flight-risk probable cause. Every later surge reused this approach: roving stops at workplaces, chosen for visibility rather than from target lists. ## The surges, 2025–26 | Dates | City | Operation | What happened | |---|---|---|---| | June 2025 on | Los Angeles | — | On June 12, beside [[Kristi Noem]], Bovino announced he was in charge of CBP operations in Los Angeles. More than 5,000 arrests were reported. The roving-patrol stops were the subject of [[Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo]] | | Sept–Nov 2025 | Chicago | [[Operation Midway Blitz]] | More than 3,000 arrests. Federal Judge Sara Ellis found Bovino had lied under oath (see below) | | Mid-Nov 2025 | Charlotte, NC | "Charlotte's Web" | Border Patrol agents left the city within about a week | | Dec 2025 | New Orleans | "Catahoula Crunch" | Part of the same southern expansion as Charlotte | | Dec 2025–Jan 2026 | Minneapolis–Saint Paul | [[Operation Metro Surge]] | Bovino was the most visible federal official. Agents killed two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and he was pulled out on January 26–27 | **The title.** "Commander-at-large" had no basis in law. According to NBC News, as cited by Wikipedia, [[Kristi Noem]] used it in an October 2025 op-ed, which this page has not located directly. Bovino reported to Noem directly rather than up the Border Patrol chain. NBC News reported an email from the Chicago operation in which he wrote: "Mr. Lyons said he was in charge, and I corrected him saying I report to Corey Lewandowski." The email refers to [[Todd Lyons]] of ICE and [[Corey Lewandowski]]. ## Chicago: a judge finds he lied In *Chicago Headline Club v. Noem*, journalists, protesters and clergy sued over force used at the Broadview, Illinois ICE facility and on Chicago streets. U.S. District Judge **Sara Ellis** issued a temporary restraining order on October 9, 2025. On October 28 she ordered Bovino to report to her daily on Border Patrol use of force. The Seventh Circuit blocked that order on mandamus, calling it a separation-of-powers problem. On **November 6, 2025**, ruling from the bench, she converted the restrictions into a preliminary injunction and said Bovino had admitted lying in his deposition. It covered tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, flash-bangs and tasers, required warnings and body cameras, and banned chokeholds except where needed to prevent serious injury or death. Her **233-page written opinion** followed about two weeks later and made findings about Bovino personally: - Bovino "admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas in Little Village." No rock had struck him. He threw a canister into the crowd without warning and fired a second at people who were fleeing. - In his deposition he was "evasive," giving answers that were either "cute" or "outright lying." - Federal officials "cannot simply create their own narrative of what happened." On **March 5, 2026**, after the operation ended and the case was dismissed, the Seventh Circuit vacated the injunction. It gave two grounds: the case "appears to be moot," and, alternatively, the order's "extraordinary circumstances." Judge Easterbrook dissented on the vacatur only. The vacatur erased the order. It did not reverse the findings of fact, which went on to trail Bovino's career. ## Minneapolis and removal Bovino arrived in Minneapolis as the face of [[Operation Metro Surge]]. On **January 7, 2026**, an ICE officer shot and killed Renée Good (see [[Renée Good Killing]]). Bovino defended agents' conduct as "legal, ethical, and moral." On **January 24**, Border Patrol and CBP personnel shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti (see [[Alex Pretti Killing]]). Bovino said Pretti "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." Bystander video showed Pretti holding a phone before he was pepper-sprayed, pinned and shot. Bovino told CNN, "The victims are the Border Patrol agents." On **January 26**, Trump sent [[Tom Homan]] to take over in Minnesota, and Bovino left the city the next day. The Atlantic, citing a DHS official and two other sources, reported he had been stripped of the commander-at-large role and sent back to El Centro. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted that he had "NOT been relieved of his duties." During the Minneapolis weeks his long olive overcoat drew comparisons to a Nazi officer's from Gov. [[Gavin Newsom]] and from Germany's *Der Spiegel* and *Süddeutsche Zeitung*. Bovino said the coat was CBP-issued and he had owned it for more than 25 years. ## The inquiry and retirement On **March 2, 2026**, CBP notified Bovino that it was "conducting an official Inquiry into allegations of misconduct." According to the letter, released later and reported by CBS News in September 2026, the inquiry asked about: - his court testimony and the Ellis findings, including whether they made him "Giglio-impaired," meaning his credibility would have to be disclosed in future prosecutions; - whether he had asked "Do Orthodox criminals also take off Saturday?" on a call with lawyers, a remark the *New York Times* had reported on January 31, aimed at a federal prosecutor. Sixteen days later, on March 18, he filed his retirement paperwork. Bovino says he was "forced to retire." He says CBP Commissioner [[Rodney Scott]] targeted him as a political rival and because Scott opposed Border Patrol doing interior enforcement. CBP says he "voluntarily retired." A February 2026 whistleblower complaint had separately accused Scott of using investigations to pursue "personal or political vendettas," with Bovino as the main target. Neither side's account has been independently confirmed. See [[Rodney Scott]]. The Ellis findings were the documented basis for the inquiry, so the court record outlasted the injunction. The Seventh Circuit wiped out the order, but the finding that he lied under oath stayed attached to him. ## After the Border Patrol: the remigration turn > [!warning] Characterizations below are attributed > The descriptions of Bovino's post-retirement statements and images come from the outlets named. Where coverage reports an interpretation, such as what a gesture in a photo "appears" to show, this page attributes the interpretation rather than adopting it. - **Criticizing his old bosses (spring 2026).** He told the *New York Times* in March, "I wish I'd caught even more illegal aliens," and said he had wanted to deport 100 million people. On X he attacked [[Tom Homan]], [[Susie Wiles]], [[Chris LaCivita]] and DHS Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]], accusing the administration of going soft on mass deportation. - **The Remigration Summit (late May 2026).** He attended [[Martin Sellner]]'s second [[Remigration Summit]] in Portugal as a billed "VIP Guest," alongside [[Jared Taylor]]. In a video with Sellner he said, "Your ideas, we talked a lot on that. And again, those ideas mirror each other." Before the trip he told a French far-right outlet that Erwin Rommel inspired him. He described the surges he led as a media contest: "having our media apparatus outwork [our opponents'] media apparatus." [[AfD]] politicians posed for photos with him. According to *The Bulwark*, one of them, Kay Gottschalk, invited him to Berlin to "give us some ideas for Germany," and Bovino said he was "a phone call away." Mullin called him "irrelevant." Since the conference Bovino has used "remigration" repeatedly on social media. - **Delaney Hall (late May 2026).** During protests at the Newark detention center, he posted "ICE Agents at Delaney, hang in there… give them hell and live the moment!!" with a photo of himself that *The Bulwark* described as "appearing to give the Nazi salute." The photo was cropped from an October 2025 news image. - **2028 (June 2026).** On June 8 he told NewsNation he had formed an exploratory committee for a 2028 presidential run and would launch a formal campaign "if it all comes together." On X he wrote that his "one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here," and that "all options are on the table." The Bovino2028.com site describes itself as a volunteer draft effort "not affiliated with any candidate," but one report says the exploratory committee launched it, and Bovino has linked to it himself. Its relationship to the committee is unresolved. - **Litigation.** Bovino is among the defendants in the two federal suits Renée Good's family filed on October 1, 2026. The others include the shooting officer, Noem, Homan, [[Stephen Miller]], Lewandowski and Lyons. The claims include wrongful death and a civil-rights conspiracy under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. ## Significance for the KB - **The enforcer as content.** Bovino's surges were staged for the camera, and he said so: the goal was to outwork the other side's "media apparatus." This matches [[Stephen Miller]]'s reported instruction to send agents where protesters were thickest to win the "PR battle." Bovino was the person who carried it out. - **The person stopped mattering, not the plan.** He was removed after Minneapolis, investigated, and retired. Policy did not change. What changed was the face. In the vault's terms, the institution does the work, and the figurehead is replaceable. - **The transatlantic bridge, embodied.** He is the clearest human link between the U.S. deportation machine and the European movement that coined [[Remigration]]. He commanded the surges, then he took the movement's vocabulary as his own, and AfD politicians sought him out as someone who could export the model. ## See Also [[Operation Midway Blitz]] · [[Operation Metro Surge]] · [[Renée Good Killing]] · [[Alex Pretti Killing]] · [[ICE Minneapolis Killings]] · [[Rodney Scott]] · [[Kristi Noem]] · [[Tom Homan]] · [[CBP]] · [[Remigration Summit]] · [[Remigration]] · [[Martin Sellner]] · [[Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo]] · [[Operation Wetback]]