{"id":306947,"date":"2026-01-27T23:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/306947\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T23:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:15:11","slug":"who-is-gregory-bovino-the-us-border-patrols-would-be-napoleon-with-a-viral-ss-coat-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/306947\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol\u2019s would-be Napoleon with a viral \u2018SS\u2019 coat? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Critics have called him a would-be Napoleon and mocked his \u201cNazi\u201d aesthetic, but with Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s anti-immigrant surge into Minneapolis, Gregory Bovino seemed to have found the political moment he had long been seeking.<\/p>\n

Bovino, 55, a senior US border patrol official, initially rose to prominence as the figurehead of immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.<\/p>\n

But his provocatively unapologetic utterances in Minneapolis after the shooting of Alex Pretti<\/a>, a 37-year-old American citizen, by border patrol officers propelled him to a new level of notoriety that finally exceeded the tolerance even of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

With the White House under intense pressure amid a fierce backlash against Pretti\u2019s fatal shooting, Bovino \u2013 rather than being lionised \u2013 has become an early casualty of the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to change its posture. Officials revealed that he was to be withdrawn from his frontline role in the midwestern city. <\/p>\n

He was expected to be pulled out as Tom Homan, Trump\u2019s \u201cborder tsar\u201d, was sent in to oversee the operation on the ground.<\/p>\n

In a startling illustration of the extent of his sudden defenestration, the Department of Homeland Security on Monday suspended Bovino\u2019s access to his social media account, which he had used as a vehicle to publicise his militant commitment to Trump\u2019s anti-immigration agenda.<\/p>\n

Bovino had put himself in the vanguard of the administration\u2019s initial aggressive pushback against the revulsion sparked by Pretti\u2019s killing by claiming that the dead man had intended to \u201cmassacre law enforcement\u201d agents.<\/p>\n

\"GregoryGregory Bovino during a news conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday. Photograph: Vincent Alban\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

[\u00a0White House backtracks initial claims about Alex Pretti after intense backlashOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As mounting video evidence laid waste those claims, he doubled down defiantly on the US\u2019s Sunday talkshows.<\/p>\n

Even while acknowledging that an investigation was under way, Bovino seemed to forestall its outcome by blaming the deceased, whom he continued to call a \u201csuspect\u201d rather than a victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe suspect put himself in that situation,\u201d Bovino told Dana Bash on CNN\u2019s State of the Union on Sunday, ignoring footage that suggested Pretti had been trying to help a woman who had been violently pushed to the ground by agents. \u201cThe victims are the border patrol agents there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than retreat from his unsubstantiated earlier claims about Pretti\u2019s murderous intent, Bovino instead embarked on a chilling homily about moral choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone makes the choice to come into an active law enforcement scene, interfere, obstruct, delay or assault law enforcement officer and \u2013 and they bring a weapon to do that, that is a choice that that individual made,\u201d he told Bash.<\/p>\n

Bovino\u2019s appearances in Minneapolis caught widespread attention even before Saturday\u2019s tragic episode. He was captured on film throwing a tear-gas canister at protesters.<\/p>\n

Pictures of him striding around the city wearing a long winter greatcoat with brass buttons were also noted by German media, which commented that his appearance \u2013 including a closely cropped haircut \u2013 seemed intended to evoke fascist aesthetics, which Bovino has denied.<\/p>\n

\"LiamLiam Conejo Ramos, 5, is seen being detained in a photo released by Columbia Heights Public Schools officials that prompted anger in the Twin Cities. Photograph: Columbia Heights Public Schools via The New York Times<\/p>\n

After the photographed detention of five-year-old Liam Ramos last week, Bovino engaged in incendiary tactics of a different kind, telling journalists that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and border patrol agents were \u201cexperts in dealing with children\u201d. <\/p>\n

Of the boy\u2019s detention in a Texas facility with his father, Bovino added: \u201cThat child is in the least restrictive setting possible … I don\u2019t think it gets any better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bovino captured headlines in a similar fashion in Los Angeles, the first major city targeted by the Trump administration\u2019s immigration offensive. Amid howls of disapproval from elected Democratic officials, he and squads of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents embarked on aggressive, gun-toting patrols that netted thousands of arrests, often carried out with little more justification than that detainees spoke Spanish or appeared to be from Latin America.<\/p>\n

Masked agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and staged an intimidating horseback patrol in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, all supposedly aimed at detaining people in the US without documentation.<\/p>\n

Bovino, who formally heads the border patrol\u2019s El Centro sector in southern California and is a 29-year veteran of the agency, organised the production of videos on social media that depicted his team\u2019s work in scenes resembling action films. They seemed tailor-made to appeal to the president\u2019s renowned taste for audiovisual bombast \u2013 for example, by portraying his unit on manoeuvres in Los Angeles to a soundtrack of heavy metal music.<\/p>\n

He came under further scrutiny after he arrived in Chicago in September to lead an offensive targeting undocumented people in a city Trump has labelled \u201cthe most dangerous in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

That appearance drew the attention of WBEZ Chicago, a public radio station, which carried out an investigation into his background, seeking clues as to what drove his zeal for immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

\"USUS Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino (C) looks on as he is confronted by community members on January 21, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Stephen Maturen\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Minneapolis shooting: Trump administration abandons its \u2018deny and attack\u2019 approachOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The station reported that Bovino had been inspired to become a border agent in his early teens after watching The Border, a Hollywood film featuring Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel. But according to the station, he was apparently disappointed that the production failed to depict border patrol agents as the good guys.<\/p>\n

The investigation also noted that Bovino\u2019s father, Mike, a former bar owner, had been jailed when his son was 12 after being convicted of drink-driving over an accident in which a 26-year-old woman was killed and her husband seriously injured.<\/p>\n

In his role as a border patrol supremo enforcing the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown, Bovino has frequently cited the dangers supposedly posed by immigrants causing accidents through drink-driving, WBEZ reported.<\/p>\n

Bovino\u2019s family background and professional career seem at odds with the mission he has embraced with such gusto.<\/p>\n

He was raised in North Carolina. Biographies note that his paternal great-grandparents were poor immigrants from rural southern Italy, not unlike many of the people he has been targeting in his aggressive patrols.<\/p>\n

His great-grandfather Michele was a migrant coalminer in Pennsylvania when he applied for US citizenship in 1924, shortly after Congress passed a law limiting immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which were deemed at the time to be harbingers of crime. He was naturalised in 1927, thereafter bringing his wife and four children from the Italian region of Calabria, in a process of chain migration.<\/p>\n

That immigrant background, critics say, somewhat contradicts Bovino\u2019s frequent nativist invocations of \u201cMa and Pa America\u201d.<\/p>\n

His deployment to Minneapolis in freezing midwinter is likewise far removed from his normal border patrol bailiwick in southern California. Minneapolis, and other urban environments he and his agents have recently been sent to, represent drastically different challenges to what they are familiar with \u2013 and pose potentially high risks, experienced law enforcement officers say.<\/p>\n

\u201cBorder patrol is trained and at their most effective on the border or within 25 miles of the border,\u201d said Gil Kerlikowske, who was the CBP commissioner during Barack Obama\u2019s presidency and a former chief of police in Seattle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not trained in policing a city like Chicago or Los Angeles or Boston [and] they are clearly in the wrong venue. To police an urban environment takes really special skills. They work with senior officers to understand the community they serve.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t get parachuted in to Los Angeles or other cities marching to some type of rock music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GregoryGregory Bovino has often used the phrase \u201cturn and burn\u201d to describe Border Patrol operations. Photograph: Jamie Kelter Davis\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Bovino has dismissed Democrats\u2019 criticism \u2013 that the raids are targeting people seeking work to feed their families rather than criminals \u2013 as \u201cuninformed\u201d and \u201cwishful thinking\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose individuals come in, they may have a criminal history in their home country,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, I don\u2019t feel bad.\u201d <\/p>\n

Discussing the operations in Los Angeles, he pushed back on the criticism of the mayor, Karen Bass: \u201cThere\u2019s something here that Bass and the governor and the other folks haven\u2019t seemed to touch on, [which] is look at the professionalism of DHS entities in our allied law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few, if any, civilians hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is a claim that has a bitterly ironic ring to it several months later. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n

[\u00a0If Trump goes after Ireland, he will also destroy a lot of US wealthOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Critics have called him a would-be Napoleon and mocked his \u201cNazi\u201d aesthetic, but with Donald Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant surge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,384,107,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-306947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115969611429021764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}