Ex-border patrol chief defends his record after exit: ‘I wish I’d caught more illegal aliens’ | Trump administration
As he approaches retirement, Gregory Bovino, the former commanding general of the U.S. Border Patrol, argued that the Donald Trump administration’s efforts to curb illegal immigration did not go far enough; He showed no remorse for federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
“I wish I had caught more illegal aliens” he told the New York Times He referred to the Republican president as a “Trumpster” in an exit interview Tuesday and acknowledged that his retirement at the end of March was not entirely voluntary.
“We tried as much as we could, but there is always a creative and innovative solution to achieve more.”
Bovino announced his retirement from patrol in early March.
He spent most of his 30-year career in California’s El Centro sector before being tapped by the Trump administration to lead the massive Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
Trump later demoted Bovino after federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good, 37, in separate encounters in January while each was under investigation.
In successive sweeps of Democratic-led cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans, Bovino was the public face of the ongoing campaign; He personally launched pepper spray canisters into the crowd and reported directly to Kristi Noem, the since-replaced homeland security secretary.
He became a hate figure of the left. California governor Gavin Newsom said Bovino’s dark green, double-breasted jacket looked like he “literally went on eBay and bought SS clothing,” a reference to the Nazi paramilitary group that ran concentration camps during the Holocaust and World War II.
In the Times interview, Bovino said he bought the coat as a young agent. He referred to himself in the third person as “Chief Bovino” and said he felt hindered by bureaucrats who limited “turn and burn” tactics in high-speed operations meant to be completed before protesters attacked them.
“We wanted complete control of the borders,” Bovino told the outlet. “When you use terms like that, it perhaps scares some weak-minded people. Domination. I want you to master that boundary.”
“I won’t ‘control’ it. We’ll have complete control of that damn place.”
In what would be considered one of the most introductory career reflection interviews, Bovino praised Trump and said he “received a lot of praise from Trumpsters.” He said the praise was conveyed to him by Corey Lewandowski, a top aide to Noem, and that U.S. senator Markwayne Mullin, who replaced him as homeland security secretary, received Senate confirmation on Monday.
Bovino said his plan (the White House cut to the chase) was to deport 100 million people (far more than the number of immigrants estimated to be in the U.S. without permission).
The Times cited previously unreported legal documents that show Bovino referred to undocumented immigrants as “scum,” “garbage” and “scum.”
The Times noted that the exaggerated persona Bovino adopted at times drew comparisons to the fictional Colonel Steven J Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn in the Oscar-winning film One Battle After Another. Bovino said he had not seen the film but described Penn as “fringe, left, liberal.”
Other politically incorrect terms that Bovino said he enjoyed included calling Barack Obama by the former president’s middle name, Hussein. He also referred to immigrants at the US border as “walking zombies” during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said he organized teams to approach people at gas stations and public transportation hubs to ask about their immigration status in the United States; he described this tactic as “consensual encounters”.
Bovino also used social media to get his message to residents in cities swarmed by federal agents, even if it warranted condemnation. “I yelled so much, I got in trouble and I didn’t care,” Bovino told the outlet.
Bovino said the immigration raids he conducts target criminals, but agents do not know the criminal or immigration history of most people they arrest. case Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Times interview quoted a Homeland Security spokesman as saying: another exit He said the Trump administration chose Bovino to lead its crackdown on immigrants “because he’s a troublemaker.”
But after Good and Pretti were killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and border patrol agents, respectively, Bovino was told to stand down.
He said he stood by Pretti’s comments that he wanted to “massacre law enforcement” when agents killed him. Video from the scene shows Pretti was unarmed when agents shot him to death.
Bovino also confirmed that he ignored a warning that his tactics could result in death.
“It’s possible, yes,” he told the news outlet, which he recalled responding to the warning.
Bovino faces a series of lawsuits from civil rights groups as well as an internal investigation by a Jewish prosecutor in Minnesota for taking leave for Shabbat. Bovino says this accusation is unfounded and “made by primitive people.”
Bovino denied reports that he was kicked out of a bar in Las Vegas at 12.30am during his farewell tour of US cities, saying the night was a “really positive experience” and that “the bartenders loved his band”.
Bovino, who has a degree in natural resource conservation, said his retirement plans include fighting “non-native invasive species” that are killing native timber rattlesnakes in the Appalachian region of North Carolina where he grew up.
The Times said he was talking about coyotes, but not what he called human smugglers nicknamed coyotes who smuggle undocumented immigrants into the United States.
Regarding this retirement mission, he told the Times: “I’m going to take this into my own hands.”
