Gregory Bovino
Who is Gregory Bovino?
What led to Gregory Bovino’s demotion in 2026?
What sparked Gregory Bovino’s interest in the Border Patrol?
What educational background does Gregory Bovino have?
What controversial actions did Gregory Bovino oversee in 2025?
Gregory Bovino is an American law enforcement official who spent most of his career working for the United States Border Patrol. During the second administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, he became the face of the Border Patrol’s more militant and aggressive practices, overseeing immigration raids in several major cities, including Chicago, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. In January 2026, after the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Bovino was stripped of the title of commander at large of the U.S. Border Patrol and demoted.
Early life
- Birth year: 1970
- Birthplace: San Bernardino county, California
- Birth name: Gregory Kent Bovino
- Education: Western Carolina University, bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude), 1993; Appalachian State University, master’s degree; National War College, master’s degree
- Known for: Overseeing the U.S. Border Patrol’s aggressive enforcement strategies
- Quotation: “The blood of innocents is on you. We’ve shown and told you for weeks now, yet you continue choosing illegal aliens over Ma and Pa America.” —Bovino to Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein
Bovino was born in California in 1970 and grew up in the small western North Carolina town of Blowing Rock. His mother, Betty Hartley Bovino, and her family had deep roots in the area, and she worked for the chamber of commerce for the tourist destination. His father, Mike Bovino, owned a bar and spent time in prison for killing a woman while driving drunk.
When Bovino was about 11, his parents took him to see the movie The Border, starring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel, which had been produced by a distant relative. In the film, Nicholson’s character takes a job with the Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, only to realize his colleagues are steeped in crime and corruption. The character ultimately stands up for a Mexican immigrant and her newborn.
The film sparked Bovino’s interest in working for the agency. “The extreme amount of violence those Border Patrol agents, or they were called inspectors back then, were up against, it struck me, wow, that was a pretty tough organization to be out there alone with no backup,” he told The New York Times in 2025. “And I began to realize that that thing called the U.S. Border Patrol is probably something pretty special.”
Bovino’s parents divorced in the early 1980s, and Bovino attended Watauga High School. His former wrestling coach described him in an article published by the Chicago Sun-Times as a “solid-rock student athlete.” Bovino received a bachelor’s degree in natural resource conservation from Western Carolina University and a master’s in public administration from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He worked for the Boone Police Department until 1996, when he joined the Border Patrol.
Border enforcement career
His first assignment in the Border Patrol took him to El Centro, California. As he rose through the department’s ranks, he was stationed at other places along the southern border and in New Orleans. He also received a second master’s degree at the National War College in Washington, D.C.
In 2020 he was appointed one of the agency’s nine chief patrol agents and assigned once more to El Centro, where he oversaw about 1,100 employees. He has championed his work there, saying the “consequences” meted out to immigrants without legal status there successfully reduced the number of border crossings. But he also faced disciplinary action for several social media posts, which he had been ordered to take down.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
In congressional testimony in 2023 he acknowledged that he had posted about a person in the country illegally who had killed someone in a drunk driving accident and about “two Yemenis, terrorists.” He expressed concern about the “threat of a reprisal” from his supervisors for his social media activity. After the congressional appearance he was briefly demoted during the Biden administration but was restored to his role after Republican lawmakers objected.
In January 2025, shortly before Trump’s inauguration, the Border Patrol launched the raid Operation Return to Sender. Bovino’s agents in California were accused of indiscriminately sweeping up Latinos, including some legal residents. One U.S. citizen said agents blocked his truck, slashed his tires, and dragged a passenger out and arrested the person.
Role in 2025–26 crackdowns
The raids brought him national attention, and under the new Trump administration, Bovino became the public face of the Border Patrol’s increasing militancy. In June 2025 he oversaw a massive raid in Los Angeles, in which Border Patrol agents flooded Home Depot parking lots and car washes, detaining immigrants by the thousands.
As they had done in El Centro, the agents allegedly stopped many people because they looked like immigrants, without evidence that they were committing crimes. A federal prosecutor reminded Bovino of a federal court order that banned the agency from stopping people indiscriminately, but less than six hours later, the prosecutor was fired. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that the agency could resume its controversial tactics.
In September Bovino led a raid in Chicago called Operation Midway Blitz. As the Border Patrol arrested thousands of immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security was noted for its heavy use of social media. For instance, it posted videos online of a late-night raid on an apartment complex. One video shows agents as they rappelled from a helicopter down to the roof, threw flash-bangs into individual units, and detained adults and children.
Bovino personally joined Border Patrol agents on the streets. He was sued for lobbing a canister of tear gas toward a crowd of protesters, despite a judicial order that banned the agency from using riot-control weapons unless there was an immediate threat. Bovino claimed he had used the canister after someone threw a rock that hit him in the head. But videos of the incident disproved this, and Bovino ultimately admitted it was not true.
In the fall Bovino and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski restructured the administration’s immigration enforcement operations. Displeased that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was falling short of its arrest quotas, they replaced several of ICE’s regional leaders with Border Patrol officials.
In November Bovino posted a Batman-inspired video that showed masked agents conducting raids at Home Depot stores. The tagline on his post read, “Masked up, mission ready. ‘It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.’ ”
Bovino also played a key role in Operation Metro Surge, the campaign in Minneapolis–St. Paul that started in December 2025, which the Trump administration called its largest immigration action. At the time, Bovino enjoyed the support of Trump, who posted on social media in December, “Greg Bovino just went scorched earth on Democrat governors–and he didn’t hold back. THAT is how it’s done.”
In January 2026, when federal agents killed the Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Bovino and other officials blamed the deaths on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey. He also applauded the actions of the agents on CNN and described them as victims. But as protests in Minneapolis continued and public support for the administration’s handling of immigration cratered, Trump soured on Bovino, saying of his actions, “Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
Shortly thereafter, Bovino was stripped of his title and returned to California. He was expected to retire. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, took over running immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota.