ICE commander with Italian immigrant grandparents Gregory Bovino made posterboy of raids
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commander, Gregory K Bovino, has risen to prominence in recent weeks after being pictured flanked by guards as he goes to the toilet during an immigration raid.
The senior official has come under fire after he arrived in Minneapolis with other ICE agents dressed in what people believed resembled clothing similar to an SS officer.
Users online criticised Bovino for wearing clothing that was ‘cosplaying Nazis’ when he wore a green trench coat fitted with gold buttons and the CBP’s insignia.
Nicknamed ‘commander at large’, he is sometimes referred to as the face of Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants in the US for his involvement in recent immigration-related operations.
Most recently, he was criticised for praising ICE agent Jonathon ‘Jon’ Ross after he shot dead mother-of-three and US citizen Renee Good.
Who is Gregory Bovino?
Gregory Bovino has been a senior officer in the United States Border Patrol since 2019, but began his career with the force in 1996 when he was assigned to El Paso, Texas.
He was born and raised in North Carolina and was the grandson of two immigrants from Calabria, Italy, who moved to Pennsylvania in 1909 before becoming naturalised citizens in 1927.
Joseph Sciorra — the director of academic programs at the Calandra Italian American Institute said nearly a century later, it’s astonishing to see ‘a person whose grandfather was an immigrant engaging in such abhorrent and violent treatment of contemporary migrants.’
‘You can’t help but think,’ Sciorra added, ‘what’s going on in a person’s conscience with that kind of background and that kind of behaviour.’
At school he told teachers that he spent his spare time hunting ‘poisonous’ snakes wherever he could find them.
In 1993, Bovino graduated from Western Carolina University and later attended graduate school at Appalachian State University.
Little is known about his parents, who divorced when Bovino was 14, but it is understood that his father, Mike, once owned a bar for some time.
It has also been reported that the senior official was inspired to join the Border Patrol after watching the 1982 film The Border, which follows the fictional story of immigration enforcement agent Charlie Smith.
Gregory Bovino’s sister, alleged he was left seething by the film. She said: ‘Greg was so psyched because he’d read all these articles and loved the toughness and the values of all these old timers.
‘Then he went to the movie, and the Border Patrol person was a criminal.’
Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol senior agent, told the Chicago Sun Times Bovino was known as’the Liberace of the Border Patrol’ for his flamboyant behaviour and social media cameramen that follow him on raids.
As the public face of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, Bovino has vowed to arrest the ‘worst of the worst’ including people who drive under the influence of alcohol.
But the Chicago Sun Times reported his own father went to prison after killing a 26-year-old woman in a drunk-driving accident.
Does he have military experience?
It appears Bovino does not have a military background, but he does have a career with Border Patrol spanning 30 years.
His patrol career began in 1996 in Texas, where he quickly rose through the ranks taking on leadership roles throughout his career.
In 2008, he became assistant chief at the Border Patrol’s sector in Yuma, Arizona and in the same year was promoted to patrol agent in charge of the station in Blythe, California.
By August 2019, Bovino was made the chief of the Border Patrol’s sector in New Orleans and just 19 months later became chief of the sector in El Centro, California.
Controversies
The senior official has come under fire after users online accused him of resembling an SS officer.
Other pictures showed Bovino with an entourage of ICE agents dressed in a green trench coat, fitted with gold buttons and the CBP insignia on his upper arms, and a black scarf.
Many criticised his look for ‘cosplaying Nazis’ while others described the group of agents as ‘evil villains’.
He has been spotted roaming protests barking at people to get off the streets.
At one point he is seen being escorted to a supermarket toilet by a dozen or so bodyguards as protesters swear at him.
More recently, Bovino was criticised after he told Fox News on Saturday that he would continue using tear gas despite a Minnesota federal judge barring federal officers from using it against peaceful protesters, just a day before his comments.
His remarks were heavily scrutinised as Bovino was previously filmed throwing a tear gas cannister at a mass of protesters.
This action led to a civil lawsuit alleging that he had violated a court order preventing federal immigration agents from using tear gas.
What are his political views?
The specific details about Bovino’s political views are not widely shared, but a former Border Patrol colleague suggested he does echo right-wing views, the Chicago Sun Times reported.
The former agent described Bovino’s behaviour as flamboyant, particularly in front of cameras that film the raids.
‘He’s just a little Napoleon who wants you to think that he is a hero and the most moral and capable guy in the world, and everything around you is dangerous,’ she said in an interview.
Bovino has said that his main concern is to protect what he calls ‘Ma and Pa America’ from bad people, his catchphrase: ‘What happens at the border never stays at the border.’
During Trump’s second term as US president, Bovino led the implementation of the administration’s immigration policy in California.
He was named the tactical commander of a mass raid operation in Los Angeles last June, which sparked a slew of protests across the city.
What did he say about the shooting of Renee Good?
Bovino has been at the centre of many controversies, most recently for his comments about ICE agent, Jonathan ‘Jon’ Ross, who shot Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Speaking to Fox News this week, the senior official appeared to praise the ICE agent for his work, citing that footage of Good and her wife, Rebecca, taunting Ross led to the fatal shot.
He said their actions leading up to the shooting were a ‘means, intent and opportunity’ – a common framework in law enforcement to determine whether force should be used.
‘Did that individual have the intent?’ he said.
‘Look at those minutes leading up to the shooting and we will see what I would consider some pretty important intent.’
He later added: ‘Hats off to that ICE agent, I’m glad he made it out alive, I’m glad he’s with his family.’
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