The man at the forefront of the most aggressive immigration crackdown in modern American history is going out swinging.
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol “commander at large” whose rampage through American cities ended with the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, sat down with The New York Times and took jabs at colleagues who, he says, never had the guts to match him.
The retribution campaign comes after Bovino confirmed he would leave the agency at the end of March after nearly 30 years. He will officially retire this week. He previously called the role “the greatest honor of my entire life” in remarks to Breitbart News.
But he now appears eager to dump on the “weaker-minded people” who disapprove of his brutal methods.
He took a shot at Tom Homan, the border czar Trump called on to take over immigration operations in Minneapolis after Bovino himself was given the boot. Referencing accusations that Homan once accepted a $50,000 cash bribe in a paper bag, Bovino told the Times: “You’re not going to see me talking to anyone for a bag of money.”
Homan was investigated over the allegation but was never charged with a crime. Bovino did not elaborate on his comments, perhaps wisely.
Homan was reported to have been at odds with Bovino, who was backed by now ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 54, and her chief aide and rumored lover Corey Lewandowski, 52.
As the Daily Beast previously revealed, Trump aide Stephen Miller was furious that Bovino and his tactics had been chosen as the public face of Trump’s immigration blitz—a decision made by Lewandowski and Noem.
Miller is seen by many as the chief architect of Trump’s heavy-handed and sweeping immigration crackdown.
After the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, a White House source told Axios that “Bovino should be blamed” for the misinformation around the victim, “not Stephen.”
Bovino, for his part, conceded that he and Miller had “spirited” conversations at times. He reserved similar contempt for the broader bureaucracy around him, dismissing superiors as “status quo” desk jockeys who prioritized intelligence-led arrests over the “turn and burn” tactics he championed.
Bovino was often photographed in the middle of the madness his immigration sweeps created, lobbing gas canisters and jostling with protesters.
By the end of his national tour, one official told the Times, Bovino had taken things a step further by deliberately engineering confrontations at convenience stores and on the street specifically to generate content for social media.
As for his overall legacy, Bovino has one regret. He said: “I wish I’d caught even more illegal aliens. I mean, we went as hard as we could, but there’s always a creative and innovative solution to catching even more.”
The Times also unearthed previously unreported legal documents that shed light on just how far Bovino was willing to go. In court filings stemming from a discrimination lawsuit brought by four agency employees in New Orleans—who alleged he gave preferential treatment to less qualified white and male agents—Bovino admitted to calling undocumented people “scum,” “trash,” and “filth” in a speech to his agents.
He insisted he had been referring to criminals such as child rapists, then added: “All illegal aliens are criminals.” The cases were settled. His career was unaffected.
The same documents reveal a stranger, previously unreported, detail about how Bovino responded to the discrimination allegations in the lawsuit. In the legal filings, Bovino identified himself as “Native American” and his tribe as Cherokee, testifying that he had done so since he was 8 years old despite not being registered on any official tribal rolls. To reward top performance among his agents, he told the Times, he gave out tomahawks, traditional tribal axes.
It was also revealed that Bovino is now under internal investigation for making disparaging remarks about a Jewish prosecutor in Minnesota who took time off for Shabbat, Judaism’s weekly day of rest and spiritual renewal.
He told the Times he only learned of the probe through the newspaper’s reporting—not from his own superiors. He said that the accusations were “made by troglodytes.”
Despite everything, Bovino insists history will vindicate him. He called Trump the most effective president he had ever served under and said the administration had passed along praise via Lewandowski. “We got a lot of kudos from the Trumpster,” he said.
As for what comes next, Bovino is heading to the North Carolina backcountry to hunt coyotes—the four-legged kind, he clarified, “not the coyotes that smuggle aliens.”
Homan has been contacted for a response to Bovino’s missive.
