For months, Gregory Bovino has been the public face of President Trump’s sweeping immigration raids across U.S. cities.
When the brash Border Patrol commander charged into Los Angeles last summer with the stated mission of arresting thousands of immigrants, he was unapologetic as agents smashed car windows, concealed their identities with masks, seized brown-skinned Angelenos off the streets, and descended on MacArthur Park on horseback.
In Minneapolis, when a federal officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7, Bovino’s response to Fox News’ Sean Hannity was, “Hats off to that ICE agent.”
And when a Border Patrol agent shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, on Saturday, Bovino again defended the killing. Pretti, he said, looked like someone who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
But as public outrage has swelled against the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics, Bovino’s future is in limbo. On Monday, Trump deployed border advisor Tom Homan to Minnesota, with Bovino reportedly set to depart the region.
Now, the question remains: will Bovino’s departure really change the Trump playbook?
Ariel G. Ruiz Soto — a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank — said Bovino’s exit, if true, could represent a pivotal moment in immigration enforcement in the nation’s interior.
“I think it signals that the tensions have risen so significantly that there’s beginning to be ruptures and fragments within the Trump administration to try to figure out how to do this enforcement more efficiently, but also with more accountability,” Ruiz Soto said.
Other immigration experts, however, question the significance of sidelining Bovino.
“I think it’s a grave mistake to think the change in the personnel on the ground constitutes a change in policy,” said Lucas Guttentag, a professor of law at Stanford University who specializes in immigration. “Because the policy remains the same: to terrorize immigrant communities and intimidate peaceful protesters.”
Even if Bovino is ousted or given a lesser role, Guttentag said, national immigration policy is still shaped by Stephen Miller — the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor who has embraced hardline enforcement tactics.
“They’re still threatening to use military action,” Guttentag said. “They still want to keep the National Guard on call. All of those fundamental policies, as well as deporting people who had legal status, sending people to third world countries without any due process, adopting detention rules that deprive people of hearings to be eligible for release, all of that’s continuing.”
“Simply changing from Bovino to Homan,” he added, “doesn’t signal anything significant in terms of policy.”
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So far, the Department of Homeland Security has remained publicly tight-lipped about what’s next for Bovino, and did not respond this week to inquiries from The Times.
However, the Associated Press reported Monday that Bovino and some federal agents were expected to leave Minneapolis as early as Tuesday. The Atlantic, citing DHS sources, reported that Bovino had been demoted from his role of Border Patrol commander at large and would return to his former job in El Centro, Calif.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin disputed that Monday, saying on X that Bovino “has NOT been relieved of his duties.” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt described him as a “wonderful person” and “a great professional” who would “continue to lead Customs and Border Patrol throughout and across the country.”
There has been mounting criticism of and public protest against the administration’s activities since the launch of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota last month. Trump said he sent Homan to Minnesota “to de-escalate a little bit.”
“Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy,” Trump said Tuesday during an interview on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show.” “And in some cases that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
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A pugnacious 55-year-old who was born in California but raised in North Carolina, Bovino’s muscle-bound physique, green military greatcoat and gel-spiked hair seemed straight out of MAGA central casting.
Barreling into Los Angeles in June to command the Trump administration’s mass immigration raids, he seemed to relish confrontation as protests erupted and troops were deployed across the city.
“All over … the Los Angeles region, we’re going to turn and burn to that next target and the next and the next and the next, and we’re not going to stop,” Bovino told the Associated Press last summer. “We’re not going to stop until there’s not a problem here.”
When Bovino met legal setbacks, he was defiant.
In August, an appeals court upheld a temporary restraining order blocking his agents from targeting people in Southern and Central California based on race, language or vocation without reasonable suspicion they are in the U.S. illegally.
Bovino responded by posting a video on X that first showed L.A. Mayor Karen Bass telling reporters that “this experiment that was practiced on the city of Los Angeles failed” before cutting to himself grinning. As a frenetic mix of drums and bass kicked in, the video transitioned to footage of federal agents jumping out of a van to chase people down.
“When you’re faced with opposition to law and order, what do you do?” Bovino wrote. “Improvise, adapt, and overcome!”
After Bovino led agents in Los Angeles, he pivoted to Chicago to serve as the commander of Operation Midway Blitz. Then, he went to New Orleans before heading to Minnesota to lead what officials called Homeland Security’s “largest immigration operation ever.”
The fatal shootings of Good and Pretti by federal agents this month sparked outrage and protests, both in Minneapolis and around the nation.
Ruiz Soto said that the controversy over the Trump immigration policy was no longer just about immigrants.
“It’s about constitutional rights and it’s about U.S. citizens,” Ruiz Soto said. “For the broader public, it’s now much more immersive. It’s now much more in their face.”
After Border Patrol agents tackled Pretti to the ground and shot him, many Americans were outraged to hear Bovino and other senior Trump administration officials make false statements regarding the incident.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Pretti approached federal officers on the street with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.
But according to videos taken on the scene, Pretti was holding a phone, not a handgun, when he stepped in front of a federal agent who had shoved a woman to the ground. The agent shoved and pepper-sprayed him and then multiple agents forced him to the ground. In the middle of the scrum, an agent secured a handgun. Less than a second later, the first shot was fired.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asserted without evidence that Pretti had committed “an act of domestic terrorism,” and said her agency would lead the investigation into his killing.
Federal officials also denied Minnesota state investigators access to the shooting scene in south Minneapolis, prompting local and state officials to accuse the Homeland Security agency of mishandling evidence.
In the days since the shooting, Democrats in Congress have called for Noem to be removed from office.
“The country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done,” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday in a joint statement. “Kristi Noem should be fired immediately or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House.”
When asked by reporters Tuesday whether Noem would step down, Trump said: “No.”
By sidelining Bovino, Ruiz Soto said the Trump administration appears to be sending a larger message.
“They’re going to try to restrict or home in the Border Patrol’s authority or at least the way they participate in operations and are going to now go back,” he said. “Or at least try to emulate more of the prior ICE model.”
Guttentag, however, said that while the public is seeing a tactical retreat on the part of the Trump administration, the problems went beyond Bovino’s leadership.
“So it’s not just the leadership, it’s the lack of training,” Guttentag said. “It’s the message that we’re getting from the very top, the statements from the vice president and others, that they have legal immunity. It’s the instructions to be as aggressive as they can be, and it’s also the lack of quality in the hiring and training process. All of that continues regardless of who the person on the ground is.”