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The Hype Man of Trump's Mass Deportations
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. In the upper ranks of the Border Patrol, 20 officials have the title of sector chief. Gregory Bovino is the only one holding a gun in his social-media profile photo. Most of the others conform to a pretty standard formula: wearing a crisp green uniform in front of Old Glory and the black-and-green Border Patrol flag. Bovino's photo is more like a movie poster, or an AI-generated image of a comic-book character. He stands wearing a bulletproof vest against a black background, holding a tricked-out M4 rifle with a scope in his hands. He isn't holding the weapon so much as cradling it affectionately, like a cellist getting ready to play. Bovino's jaw is stiff, and his gaze is distant. Several Customs and Border Protection veterans with whom I spoke—who value the quiet strength of professional modesty—think the photo is ridiculous. And yet, the performative qualities that have made Bovino a sometimes-mocked figure within CBP are the same ones that have landed him a starring role in the promotion of President Donald Trump's deportation campaign. Bovino, whose formal title is chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector, has been put in charge of the administration's immigration crackdown on the streets of Los Angeles, more than 200 miles from his office, which sits near the border. While much of the local anger has been directed at ICE, it's actually Bovino who's been calling the shots. The guys in camouflage, masks, and military gear running around Southern California car washes and Home Depot parking lots aren't Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, but Border Patrol tactical teams trained to hunt drug smugglers in remote mountains and deserts. When horse-mounted Border Patrol agents rode through MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles with camera crews in tow on July 7, Mayor Karen Bass came rushing to the scene and pleaded with Bovino to call them off. No arrests were made, but the sight of heavily armed federal agents advancing in formation through palm trees and soccer fields was jarring to a city on edge after weeks of raids and protests. Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the Los Angeles City Council president, told reporters that if Bovino wanted to make Border Patrol promotional videos, he should 'apply for a film permit like everybody else' and 'stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody.' 'Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon,' Bovino fired back on Fox. On Friday, he released a video—set to the song 'DNA' by the rapper Kendrick Lamar, who is from L.A.—showing National Guard troops and mounted agents parading through the park with an armory of weapons and black masks covering their faces. 'People ask for it, we make it happen,' Bovino posted to his government account on X, sounding more like a hype man than a lawman. [Joshua Braver: When the military comes to American soil] At a time when Trump-administration officials have done little to conceal their frustration with ICE leaders, demoting several over the past few months for missing the White House's ambitious arrest quotas, Bovino's assignment in California has been viewed by some at ICE as a slight against the agency. Current and former CBP officials told me it was more an indication that the White House wants field generals who will press the president's deportation goals as aggressively as possible. During the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents were often overwhelmed and exhausted as record numbers of migrants crossed into the United States. Unlawful entries fell sharply during Joe Biden's last year in office, but they have plunged in recent months to levels not seen since the 1960s as a result of Trump's all-out push to seal the border. That has left the Border Patrol's roughly 19,000 agents with far less work and a lot more time. ICE, under relentless White House pressure to ramp up arrests and deportations, is now the agency that needs help. Bovino, a 29-year veteran of the Border Patrol, seemed to anticipate the opportunity well before Trump took office. Two weeks before Inauguration Day, he sent dozens of El Centro Border Patrol agents five hours north to Kern County, California, near Bakersfield. Over the course of several days, agents in plainclothes made arrests at gas stations and stopped vehicles along the highway. The surprise tactics sent a wave of fear through the farms of California's Central Valley, and though Bovino said his agents had targeted criminals, only one of the 78 people they arrested had a criminal conviction, according to records obtained by the nonprofit news organization CalMatters. The ACLU and other advocacy groups sued the government in February and won an injunction barring the Border Patrol from racially profiling suspects, and a federal district court found that Bovino's teams likely violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. (Earlier this month, another federal judge ordered the government to stop racially profiling suspects in Los Angeles.) Bovino had launched the Kern County expedition, which he called 'Operation Return to Sender,' without getting clearance from superiors in Washington, according to CBP officials I spoke with who weren't authorized to speak to reporters. The raids far from the border were not the kind of operation Biden officials would have endorsed. But those officials were already on their way out, and the Trump team coming in was thrilled with Bovino's audition. The Department of Homeland Security did not approve my request to interview Bovino. I sent a list of more than a dozen questions to DHS and CBP, asking about his record in the Border Patrol and why he's been elevated to his current role. 'Because he's a badass' was all that the DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote back. What Bovino is doing in Los Angeles is a pilot of sorts. It showcases the potential for a broader Border Patrol role in U.S. cities and communities, especially those that have adopted 'sanctuary' policies restricting local police cooperation with ICE. By law, the Border Patrol's ability to conduct warrantless searches is limited to within 100 miles of the nation's international boundaries. But that includes maritime borders, and roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population, including the country's largest metropolitan areas, fits within those boundaries. ICE has only about 5,500 immigration-enforcement officers nationwide, and though the president's tax-and-immigration bill includes funds to hire thousands more, recruiting, hiring, and training them will likely take at least a year. The Border Patrol has idle agents who are ready to go now. Border Patrol agents generally have less experience than their ICE counterparts with the procedural elements of civil immigration enforcement in urban environments. Video clips went viral last month showing a masked Border Patrol team pummeling Narciso Barranco, a landscaper and the father of three U.S. Marines, as the agents arrested him outside an IHOP in Santa Ana. Viewers were shocked, but the tactics used were not out of line with the way agents often handle migrants who try to run or resist arrest near the border. (The Department of Homeland Security justified the use of force and claimed that Barranco had tried to 'mow' them with his trimming tool.) The difference this time was that the arrest occurred on the streets of a U.S. city, not out in the desert with no one watching. [Read: Trump loves ICE. Its workforce has never been so miserable.] During the past five and a half years in El Centro, which covers southeastern California's Imperial Valley, Bovino has repeatedly insisted that he oversees the 'premier sector' of the Border Patrol. It's a facetious claim. El Centro is not considered a top-tier CBP assignment like El Paso or San Diego, where there's a lot more smuggling activity. 'It's the type of sector where someone would usually be chief for a couple years and then move on to a larger sector,' one former DHS official told me. Bovino's long tenure in El Centro without a promotion points to a lack of confidence from senior CBP leaders, the official and three former CBP officials said. DHS declined to respond. Border Patrol chiefs have always enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy from Washington regarding day-to-day operations, but they aren't supposed to make partisan statements in uniform or criticize elected officials in the states where they work. During Biden's term, Bovino was the chief who created the most consternation among CBP officials at headquarters because of his outspoken conservative views and social-media enthusiasm, current and former DHS and CBP officials told me. 'He has done things that Border Patrol leadership has had to spend time cleaning up, such as posting information that was law-enforcement-sensitive on social media, which can hamper broader law-enforcement operations,' said the former DHS official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal disciplinary actions. But the contentious relationship Bovino had with his superiors during those years has only bolstered his standing among Trump-aligned border hawks. As El Centro chief, Bovino became the lead auteur of a new style of highly produced videos for CBP. During the first Trump administration, the Border Patrol launched its own public-relations operation—the Strategic Communications division, or StratComm—to give rank-and-file agents a bigger role in touting their work, improving the agency's reputation and boosting recruitment. Many of the videos emphasized Border Patrol humanitarian efforts and rescues of distressed migrants in remote areas, or the benevolent serve-and-protect image of agents and officials attending parades and community events. Bovino has taken StratComm messaging in a different direction. In September 2020, soon after he took command in El Centro, his social-media team released 'The Gotaway,' a fictionalized video showing a migrant sneaking into the United States and murdering the first person he encounters. The video caused an uproar, and the Border Patrol temporarily took it down, as lawmakers demanded to know why agents were spending time making movies. (One former CBP official told me El Centro benefited from the talents of two agents who had taken filmmaking courses before signing up for the Border Patrol). Bovino has had legal problems as well. In 2022, a federal judge in Louisiana rejected DHS's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two Black Border Patrol employees who claimed discrimination when Bovino became sector chief in New Orleans. The two were finalists for the second-ranking position in New Orleans in April 2018 when Bovino abruptly canceled the job listing and used a transfer process to hire his close friend, a white Border Patrol official. The court found an email from the friend that compared Bovino to a Confederate general and the New Orleans office to a unit of Black Union soldiers. 'Oh jeez. DELETE!!!!' Bovino replied. The exchange raised 'concerns of racial animus' in the hiring process, the judge wrote. DHS settled the case. In 2023, Bovino landed at the center of a partisan fight in Congress when Biden officials blocked him from testifying during a Republican-led investigation of the administration's border policies. Top Republicans sent a letter to CBP claiming Bovino had been silenced and retaliated against when he was temporarily reassigned to a desk job in Washington. Rodney Scott, the current commissioner of CBP and the former Border Patrol chief, was one of Bovino's most ardent defenders. Bovino returned to El Centro, his social-media enthusiasm undiminished. He published holiday-themed videos, including hokey parodies of Home Alone and A Christmas Story. The old serve-and-protect messaging was out in favor of guns, ATVs, and tactical teams kicking ass to heavy metal and thumping bass tracks. More recently, the messaging has turned messianic. A CPB video circulated this month by the Department of Homeland Security embodies a new synthesis of high-paced action with Christian-nationalist themes. The video, 'Bible Verse,' opens with a monologue by the actor Shia LaBeouf, lifted from the World War II movie Fury, in which a soldier prepares his comrades to fight the Nazis with a stirring passage from the Book of Isaiah about answering the call of God. The song 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' plays to stylized, washed-out footage of Border Patrol tactical agents zooming around in helicopters and speedboats. The video has nearly 3 million views on X, and as a work of pure propaganda, it's the most engrossing CBP video I've ever seen. But former DHS and CBP officials I shared it with recoiled at the underlying message that Border Patrol agents are delivering holy vengeance. The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, which performed the song in the video, sent a cease-and-desist warning to the Department of Homeland Security. 'It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights, not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution,' the band wrote, adding: 'Oh, and go f… yourselves.' I have gotten to know at least a dozen Border Patrol sector chiefs during the decade I've spent reporting on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. The chiefs are police commanders, but they are also politicians. They tend to value the same skills required of any good leader: smooth public speaking, personal decorum, equanimity under pressure. They are not especially impressed by guns or social-media posting, and they dislike anything that elevates individual flash over institutional traditions. Much of the job of the Border Patrol is mundane and uneventful; it consists of sitting alone in a truck and watching 'the line' for hours on end in case anyone or anything potentially threatening comes across. There are periodic moments of action, especially when smuggling activity increases, but fewer now that the border is so locked down. [Adam Serwer: The deportation show] Blas Nuñez-Neto, a top border-policy official during the Biden administration, told me that Democrats have at times been too reluctant to let the Border Patrol trumpet its work stopping actual threats and capturing dangerous criminals. The stressful, tedious work agents perform while processing record numbers of asylum seekers is not meant to be their primary job, Nuñez-Neto said. "The Border Patrol's job should focus on detecting and preventing the entry of people who may present a threat to our security, not serving as the entry point for the asylum system,' he said. 'We should have an organized, safe, and orderly process for people who want to claim asylum that doesn't involve distracting the people who work between ports of entry from doing their core mission.' The Trump administration's social-media messaging has become extreme and dehumanizing, Nuñez-Neto said, but he understands Bovino's push to make the job look exciting and heroic. The former DHS official I spoke with told me he is concerned that Bovino's hard-charging approach will ultimately hurt recruitment, even if it's popular among the most gung-ho agents. 'They're going to end up with a growing recruitment challenge, because the people that they will be attracting are not actually the people that they will need to do the unglamorous work,' the former official told me. 'And most law-enforcement work is unglamorous work.' Bovino, now with a bigger stage, has continued making the work look as glamorous as possible as he and his team move from Los Angeles to other parts of California. He released another video Thursday, this one set to Kanye West's 'Power' and showing his agents rolling into Sacramento and chasing people through a Home Depot parking lot. 'There is no such thing as a sanctuary state,' Bovino says to the camera, his thumbs tucked in his belt in the style of an Old West sheriff. Tear-gas canisters dangle from his vest like hand grenades. 'This is how and why we secure the homeland,' Bovino says. 'For Ma and Pa America: We've got your backs.' Article originally published at The Atlantic Solve the daily Crossword
Atlantic
a day ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Hype Man of Trump's Mass Deportations
In the upper ranks of the Border Patrol, 20 officials have the title of sector chief. Gregory Bovino is the only one holding a gun in his social-media profile photo. Most of the others conform to a pretty standard formula: wearing a crisp green uniform in front of Old Glory and the black-and-green Border Patrol flag. Bovino's photo is more like a movie poster, or an AI-generated image of a comic-book character. He stands wearing a bulletproof vest against a black background, holding a tricked-out M4 rifle with a scope in his hands. He isn't holding the weapon so much as cradling it affectionately, like a cellist getting ready to play. Bovino's jaw is stiff, and his gaze is distant. Several Customs and Border Protection veterans with whom I spoke—who value the quiet strength of professional modesty—think the photo is ridiculous. And yet, the performative qualities that have made Bovino a sometimes-mocked figure within CBP are the same ones that have landed him a starring role in the promotion of President Donald Trump's deportation campaign. Bovino, whose formal title is chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector, has been put in charge of the administration's immigration crackdown on the streets of Los Angeles, more than 200 miles from his office, which sits near the border. While much of the local anger has been directed at ICE, it's actually Bovino who's been calling the shots. The guys in camouflage, masks, and military gear running around Southern California car washes and Home Depot parking lots aren't Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, but Border Patrol tactical teams trained to hunt drug smugglers in remote mountains and deserts. When horse-mounted Border Patrol agents rode through MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles with camera crews in tow on July 7, Mayor Karen Bass came rushing to the scene and pleaded with Bovino to call them off. No arrests were made, but the sight of heavily armed federal agents advancing in formation through palm trees and soccer fields was jarring to a city on edge after weeks of raids and protests. Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the Los Angeles City Council president, told reporters that if Bovino wanted to make Border Patrol promotional videos, he should 'apply for a film permit like everybody else' and 'stop trying to scare the bejesus out of everybody.' 'Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon,' Bovino fired back on Fox. On Friday, he released a video —set to the song 'DNA' by the rapper Kendrick Lamar, who is from L.A.—showing National Guard troops and mounted agents parading through the park with an armory of weapons and black masks covering their faces. 'People ask for it, we make it happen,' Bovino posted to his government account on X, sounding more like a hype man than a lawman. Joshua Braver: When the military comes to American soil At a time when Trump-administration officials have done little to conceal their frustration with ICE leaders, demoting several over the past few months for missing the White House's ambitious arrest quotas, Bovino's assignment in California has been viewed by some at ICE as a slight against the agency. Current and former CBP officials told me it was more an indication that the White House wants field generals who will press the president's deportation goals as aggressively as possible. During the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents were often overwhelmed and exhausted as record numbers of migrants crossed into the United States. Unlawful entries fell sharply during Joe Biden's last year in office, but they have plunged in recent months to levels not seen since the 1960s as a result of Trump's all-out push to seal the border. That has left the Border Patrol's roughly 19,000 agents with far less work and a lot more time. ICE, under relentless White House pressure to ramp up arrests and deportations, is now the agency that needs help. Bovino, a 29-year veteran of the Border Patrol, seemed to anticipate the opportunity well before Trump took office. Two weeks before Inauguration Day, he sent dozens of El Centro Border Patrol agents five hours north to Kern County, California, near Bakersfield. Over the course of several days, agents in plainclothes made arrests at gas stations and stopped vehicles along the highway. The surprise tactics sent a wave of fear through the farms of California's Central Valley, and though Bovino said his agents had targeted criminals, only one of the 78 people they arrested had a criminal conviction, according to records obtained by the nonprofit news organization CalMatters. The ACLU and other advocacy groups sued the government in February and won an injunction barring the Border Patrol from racially profiling suspects, and a federal district court found that Bovino's teams likely violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. (Earlier this month, another federal judge ordered the government to stop racially profiling suspects in Los Angeles.) Bovino had launched the Kern County expedition, which he called 'Operation Return to Sender,' without getting clearance from superiors in Washington, according to CBP officials I spoke with who weren't authorized to speak to reporters. The raids far from the border were not the kind of operation Biden officials would have endorsed. But those officials were already on their way out, and the Trump team coming in was thrilled with Bovino's audition. The Department of Homeland Security did not approve my request to interview Bovino. I sent a list of more than a dozen questions to DHS and CBP, asking about his record in the Border Patrol and why he's been elevated to his current role. 'Because he's a badass' was all that the DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote back. What Bovino is doing in Los Angeles is a pilot of sorts. It showcases the potential for a broader Border Patrol role in U.S. cities and communities, especially those that have adopted 'sanctuary' policies restricting local police cooperation with ICE. By law, the Border Patrol's ability to conduct warrantless searches is limited to within 100 miles of the nation's international boundaries. But that includes maritime borders, and roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population, including the country's largest metropolitan areas, fits within those boundaries. ICE has only about 5,500 immigration-enforcement officers nationwide, and though the president's tax-and-immigration bill includes funds to hire thousands more, recruiting, hiring, and training them will likely take at least a year. The Border Patrol has idle agents who are ready to go now. Border Patrol agents generally have less experience than their ICE counterparts with the procedural elements of civil immigration enforcement in urban environments. Video clips went viral last month showing a masked Border Patrol team pummeling Narciso Barranco, a landscaper and the father of three U.S. Marines, as the agents arrested him outside an IHOP in Santa Ana. Viewers were shocked, but the tactics used were not out of line with the way agents often handle migrants who try to run or resist arrest near the border. (The Department of Homeland Security justified the use of force and claimed that Barranco had tried to 'mow' them with his trimming tool.) The difference this time was that the arrest occurred on the streets of a U.S. city, not out in the desert with no one watching. During the past five and a half years in El Centro, which covers southeastern California's Imperial Valley, Bovino has repeatedly insisted that he oversees the 'premier sector' of the Border Patrol. It's a facetious claim. El Centro is not considered a top-tier CBP assignment like El Paso or San Diego, where there's a lot more smuggling activity. 'It's the type of sector where someone would usually be chief for a couple years and then move on to a larger sector,' one former DHS official told me. Bovino's long tenure in El Centro without a promotion points to a lack of confidence from senior CBP leaders, the official and three former CBP officials said. DHS declined to respond. Border Patrol chiefs have always enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy from Washington regarding day-to-day operations, but they aren't supposed to make partisan statements in uniform or criticize elected officials in the states where they work. During Biden's term, Bovino was the chief who created the most consternation among CBP officials at headquarters because of his outspoken conservative views and social-media enthusiasm, current and former DHS and CBP officials told me. 'He has done things that Border Patrol leadership has had to spend time cleaning up, such as posting information that was law-enforcement-sensitive on social media, which can hamper broader law-enforcement operations,' said the former DHS official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal disciplinary actions. But the contentious relationship Bovino had with his superiors during those years has only bolstered his standing among Trump-aligned border hawks. As El Centro chief, Bovino became the lead auteur of a new style of highly produced videos for CBP. During the first Trump administration, the Border Patrol launched its own public-relations operation—the Strategic Communications division, or StratComm—to give rank-and-file agents a bigger role in touting their work, improving the agency's reputation and boosting recruitment. Many of the videos emphasized Border Patrol humanitarian efforts and rescues of distressed migrants in remote areas, or the benevolent serve-and-protect image of agents and officials attending parades and community events. Bovino has taken StratComm messaging in a different direction. In September 2020, soon after he took command in El Centro, his social-media team released 'The Gotaway,' a fictionalized video showing a migrant sneaking into the United States and murdering the first person he encounters. The video caused an uproar, and the Border Patrol temporarily took it down, as lawmakers demanded to know why agents were spending time making movies. (One former CBP official told me El Centro benefited from the talents of two agents who had taken filmmaking courses before signing up for the Border Patrol). Bovino has had legal problems as well. In 2022, a federal judge in Louisiana rejected DHS's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two Black Border Patrol employees who claimed discrimination when Bovino became sector chief in New Orleans. The two were finalists for the second-ranking position in New Orleans in April 2018 when Bovino abruptly canceled the job listing and used a transfer process to hire his close friend, a white Border Patrol official. The court found an email from the friend that compared Bovino to a Confederate general and the New Orleans office to a unit of Black Union soldiers. 'Oh jeez. DELETE!!!!' Bovino replied. The exchange raised 'concerns of racial animus' in the hiring process, the judge wrote. DHS settled the case. In 2023, Bovino landed at the center of a partisan fight in Congress when Biden officials blocked him from testifying during a Republican-led investigation of the administration's border policies. Top Republicans sent a letter to CBP claiming Bovino had been silenced and retaliated against when he was temporarily reassigned to a desk job in Washington. Rodney Scott, the current commissioner of CBP and the former Border Patrol chief, was one of Bovino's most ardent defenders. Bovino returned to El Centro, his social-media enthusiasm undiminished. He published holiday-themed videos, including hokey parodies of Home Alone and A Christmas Story. The old serve-and-protect messaging was out in favor of guns, ATVs, and tactical teams kicking ass to heavy metal and thumping bass tracks. More recently, the messaging has turned messianic. A CPB video circulated this month by the Department of Homeland Security embodies a new synthesis of high-paced action with Christian-nationalist themes. The video, 'Bible Verse,' opens with a monologue by the actor Shia LaBeouf, lifted from the World War II movie Fury, in which a soldier prepares his comrades to fight the Nazis with a stirring passage from the Book of Isaiah about answering the call of God. The song 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' plays to stylized, washed-out footage of Border Patrol tactical agents zooming around in helicopters and speedboats. The video has nearly 3 million views on X, and as a work of pure propaganda, it's the most engrossing CBP video I've ever seen. But former DHS and CBP officials I shared it with recoiled at the underlying message that Border Patrol agents are delivering holy vengeance. The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, which performed the song in the video, sent a cease-and-desist warning to the Department of Homeland Security. 'It's obvious that you don't respect Copyright Law and Artist Rights any more than you respect Habeas Corpus and Due Process rights, not to mention the separation of Church and State per the US Constitution,' the band wrote, adding: 'Oh, and go f… yourselves.' I have gotten to know at least a dozen Border Patrol sector chiefs during the decade I've spent reporting on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. The chiefs are police commanders, but they are also politicians. They tend to value the same skills required of any good leader: smooth public speaking, personal decorum, equanimity under pressure. They are not especially impressed by guns or social-media posting, and they dislike anything that elevates individual flash over institutional traditions. Much of the job of the Border Patrol is mundane and uneventful; it consists of sitting alone in a truck and watching 'the line' for hours on end in case anyone or anything potentially threatening comes across. There are periodic moments of action, especially when smuggling activity increases, but fewer now that the border is so locked down. Adam Serwer: The deportation show Blas Nuñez-Neto, a top border-policy official during the Biden administration, told me that Democrats have at times been too reluctant to let the Border Patrol trumpet its work stopping actual threats and capturing dangerous criminals. The stressful, tedious work agents perform while processing record numbers of asylum seekers is not meant to be their primary job, Nuñez-Neto said. "The Border Patrol's job should focus on detecting and preventing the entry of people who may present a threat to our security, not serving as the entry point for the asylum system,' he said. 'We should have an organized, safe, and orderly process for people who want to claim asylum that doesn't involve distracting the people who work between ports of entry from doing their core mission.' The Trump administration's social-media messaging has become extreme and dehumanizing, Nuñez-Neto said, but he understands Bovino's push to make the job look exciting and heroic. The former DHS official I spoke with told me he is concerned that Bovino's hard-charging approach will ultimately hurt recruitment, even if it's popular among the most gung-ho agents. 'They're going to end up with a growing recruitment challenge, because the people that they will be attracting are not actually the people that they will need to do the unglamorous work,' the former official told me. 'And most law-enforcement work is unglamorous work.' Bovino, now with a bigger stage, has continued making the work look as glamorous as possible as he and his team move from Los Angeles to other parts of California. He released another video Thursday, this one set to Kanye West's 'Power' and showing his agents rolling into Sacramento and chasing people through a Home Depot parking lot. 'There is no such thing as a sanctuary state,' Bovino says to the camera, his thumbs tucked in his belt in the style of an Old West sheriff. Tear-gas canisters dangle from his vest like hand grenades. 'This is how and why we secure the homeland,' Bovino says. 'For Ma and Pa America: We've got your backs.'
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Border Patrol raids in Sacramento intended to send message: ‘No such thing as a sanctuary state'
Border Patrol raided a Home Depot and other locations in Sacramento on Thursday in what appeared to be a heavily orchestrated operation intended to send a message that the Trump Administration would not back down on immigration enforcement, despite legal blockades. While the raids took place miles from the state capitol grounds, Greg Bovino, the U.S. Border chief of the El Centro sector who has been leading operations in Southern California, recorded a video in front of the statehouse shortly after. 'There is no such thing as a sanctuary city. There's no such thing as a sanctuary state,' Bovino posted on X, in a produced video featuring the state capitol building and highway signs reading Sacramento. 'This is how and why we secure the homeland for Ma and Pa America. We've got your back, whether it's here in Sacramento or nationwide, we're here and we're not going anywhere.' Gov. Gavin Newsom's office immediately blasted the sweeps. 'The Border Patrol should do their jobs — at the border— instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests,' said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson Newsom. On Wednesday, Newsom had railed against Trump's immigration crackdown during a press conference at a Downey Memorial Christian Church, where agents swarmed and arrested a patron in June. Parishoners at the church are still shaken, and one girl he met was carrying around her passport. 'She's here legally. She's carrying her passport,' he said. 'That's Trump's America, 2025.' The Sacramento enforcement came after a federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday blocked agents from using racial profiling to carry out warrantless arrests that have upended hundreds of lives in immigrant communities throughout Southern California. And it took place in an area that, along with the Central Valley and a large swath of Northern California, is under a similar preliminary injunction stemming from unlawful raids launched by Bovino in January, targeting farmworkers and laborers in Kern County. The Department of Homeland Security said 11 undocumented immigrants were arrested during the operation including, Javier Dimas-Alcantara, who they said is 'dangerous serial drug abuser' who 'has been booked into jail 67 times.' 'You would not want this man to be your neighbor,' said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. 'And yet, politicians like Gavin Newsom defend criminals who terrorize American communities and demonize law enforcement who defend those same communities.' Bovino, who has been a key figure in the raids across Southern California and is named in both lawsuit, said on X operations unfolded in Los Angeles and Sacramento on Thursday. Another individual, he said, was arrested for impeding and or assaulting a federal officer. Based on videos posted Thursday, that man appears to be Jose Castillo Jr., who was on his way to work as an HVAC repairman in the Sacramento area when he stopped at the home improvement store. His wife, Andrea Castillo, said he is a hard-working, family man who would 'not be out instigating.' Her nearly 3-minute long video of Castillo Jr. being arrested circulated on social media. In the video, an agent can be seen standing up to Andrea pointing a spray can at her. 'Get the f— out of the way,' he says. Her husband, a 31-year-old American citizen, appears in the background struggling with several other agents on the ground. She runs with the agents towards him. 'He's a U.S. citizen!' she screamed over and over. Agents pinned him to the ground and he was cut on his face and bleeding, she said. She said she could hear him say, 'I can't breathe.' The scene looked similar to other raids that played out in Los Angeles during June. 'His brother is an active U.S. Marine. He is serving the country and look at what they are doing to this country, to him,' he said. Neither the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Customs and Border Protection responded to requests for comment about Castillo. But Border Patrol told Fox news that they had surveilled locations in Sacramento and ran license plates for two days before executing the arrests. Some of those plates came back as owned by previously deported illegal immigrants. Giselle Garcia, a member of NorCal Resist, a volunteer mutual aid group that has been responding to the raids said she was skeptical of the accusations. 'We have a long pattern of false allegations made by ICE and CBP that it is either immigrants or witness that insight the violence, which later turn out to be false,' she said. Elizabeth Strater, a national vice president of United Farm Workers, said her office has been flooded with calls about the Home Depot raid. The group is among several plaintiffs that brought a lawsuit against Border Patrol for raids in Kern county in January. In April a federal judge found the agency engaged in a 'pattern and practice' of unconstitutionally detaining people without reasonable suspicion they are here illegally and ordered them to stop. Strater said she saw a video Thursday morning in which she described two large federal agents kneeling on a small woman 'who is face down, while she struggles.' 'There's no reason for that kind of brutality,' she said. 'That is just brutalizing a community ... it's disgusting.' She said they are working to determine if Border Patrol was violating the terms of the judge's order. Sacramento City Councilmember Caity Maple, whose district borders the Home Depot, said she was shocked to learn of the raid, noting that she'd 'never heard of Border Patrol in Sacramento' — which is more than 480 miles from the Mexican border. Maple said law enforcement was not notified of any operations in advance. 'We're pretty far inland. We're not close to the border of either Mexico or Canada,' she said. 'For me, it was shock and concern of how do these individuals who are meant to protect our borders ostensibly end up in a place like Sacramento?'
New York Post
03-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Trump admin stops handing over illegal migrant criminals to California for prosecution — it will just deport them instead
Keep dreaming, California. When the feds nabbed a Chinese illegal immigrant who was wanted in Monterey Park, California, for assault with a deadly weapon they refused to release him back to the sanctuary Golden State to stand trial. The risk, one Border Patrol leader said, is that he'll just be released back onto the streets. Instead, they kept him in federal custody so he could be put on a one-way flight back to China, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 4 A Chinese illegal immigrant criminal was nabbed by the feds and is going back to China. X/@USBPChiefELC It's just one example of a new Trump administration policy in which many illegal migrants in federal custody who have pending criminal charges in California will not be handed back to state authorities. Instead, they'll be processed for deportation and shipped out the country, according to Fox News. US Border Patrol Chief in California's El Centro sector Gregory Bovino used the unnamed Chinese illegal migrant as an example of this policy. 'Due to sanctuary policies in CA, we aren't turning him over to local authorities because as we've seen many times, this criminal illegal alien will be released back into the country,' Bovino wrote on X. 'We are now exporting this criminal import back to his home country,' he added. Bovino also recently shared a case of a Salvadoran illegal immigrant career criminal the feds took 'straight outta Hollywood and straight into handcuffs.' The feds collared him after he already racked up 'multiple felony theft convictions, including auto theft' and had an existing warrant. 4 The Salvadoran illegal immigrant was captured in Los Angeles during Trump's mass deportation effort. X/@USBPChiefELC 'Because sanctuary policies will not guarantee his return to federal custody after the active warrant, we will not turn him over on the warrant,' said Bovino. He added: 'Instead of starring in Fast and Felonious: Grand Theft L.A., the only ride he's taking is in the back of our transport van straight to a detention facility. No stunt double. No escape. Just a real ending: arrest and deportation.' 4 Bovino told Fox News that sanctuary policies force local cops to release illegal immigrant criminals out onto the streets. FOX News Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who was elected last year on a tough-on-crime platform, insisted that criminal illegal immigrants aren't ending up back onto the streets. 'If they don't have faith that we can do our job, I would say they should have that faith,' Hochman told Fox News. 'And once they've served their jail or state prison time, they'll be turned immediately over to the federal officials. With the warrant it's automatic,' he said. President Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan isn't convinced — telling Fox News the local authorities need to do more to prove they will hand a criminal illegal immigrant back to the feds if they are set to be released from custody. 'If someone wants someone back into custody to prosecute them, they need to do a writ guaranteeing us that when they're done they'll give them back to us,' said Homan. The Trump administration will still hand over illegal immigrants to California authorities if they've engaged in egregious violent crimes or murders, according to Fox News. 4 President Trump visits the newest ICE detention center in Florida known as 'Alligator Alcatraz.' REUTERS The Trump administration sued Los Angeles, its mayor and other top city officials on Monday over the city's sanctuary policies that they claim discriminates against federal law enforcement. 'Sanctuary City laws and policies are designed to deliberately impede federal immigration officers' ability to carry out their responsibilities in those jurisdictions,' the lawsuit reads in part. 'The Los Angeles Ordinance and other policies intentionally discriminate against the Federal Government by treating federal immigration authorities differently.' Anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles turned violent earlier this month as rioters attacked immigration authorities, burned cars in the streets, and vandalized and looted local businesses. Rioters took to the streets after ICE agents hit a Home Depot in the Hispanic-majority city of Paramount June 7. The violence led Trump to call in around 4,000 National Guard troops and roughly 700 Marines to quell the madness.
Chicago Tribune
01-07-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Former Roseland resident collecting memories of a place once called Hope
Good things are in the works for Chicago's South Side Roseland neighborhood, including construction of a $48.3 million mixed use affordable housing project and new Red Line stop. But the community will always bear a history of white flight, racial division and disinvestment. Much has been written about Roseland's rapid transformation in the 1970s from an area that was predominantly white to one where residents were predominantly Black, due in part to job losses and local steel mills shutting down, but also due to Realtors stoking racism to convince longtime residents to sell. Many who left and are alive today had no say in the matter, however. They were teens or even younger at the time. And much like anyone who moves away from their childhood home, they enjoy sharing memories of where they once lived. No one seems to realize this more than Dan Bovino, who grew up in Roseland and now lives in Lansing with his wife Sue. He has cultivated an impressive following in the Chicago area and elsewhere among those wanting to share not only fond memories but photos of Roseland's past. In 2010, Bovino, a retired conductor and switchman for the Illinois Central railroad, met for lunch with a couple of friends who also grew up in Roseland. As a Fenger High School student in 1970, Paul Petraitis and a classmate shot a film about Roseland, which was later incorporated into a documentary. C.J. Martello has written extensively about the community. Bovino shares their interest in local history and now is president of the Lansing Historical Society. The lunch discussion convinced Bovino to begin researching the history of Roseland and posting photos from his childhood on his Facebook page. 'People started sending in photos,' he said. ' It got big fast.' His original collection of 200 photos of the Roseland community and areas nearby has grown to several thousand photos in 15 years. 'I have around 13,000 followers, and about 25% are from Roseland,' he said. Besides posting favorite recollections online, Bovino also gives informal photo presentations at local libraries and historical societies. During these, he shares personal recollections of specific locations, like Palmer Park, where he used to climb on a doughboy statue honoring World War I veterans, which is no longer there, or a once bustling Michigan Avenue, known to locals as 'The Ave' and a prime place for cruising. Bovino starts his presentations by showing historic images of the community's early days in the mid-1800s — a Dutch family living in a sod hut, farm fields and prairie stretching to a southern horizon punctuated by the Pullman marketplace tower, and a composite of photos of the community's nine Dutch founders — one, Jan Ton, was active in the Underground Railroad Network and offered refuge on his farm to freedom seekers before slavery was abolished amid the Civil War. There's another image of Dutch settlers wearing wooden shoes. On a recent Chicago map, the area's north border slopes southeastward from Eggleston and 87th to 95th street at what were once the Illinois Central, now Canadian National, tracks. The tracks form the community's eastern border and separate it from Pullman, running south to 115th street, the southern border. Halsted Street serves as the Western border north to 103rd where the border pulls back east to Eggleston. Bovino mentioned a post office established in 1861 by Postmaster Garis Vandersyde, who was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln. The post office identified the area as a town called Hope, but community leaders eventually opted to rename it something on the order of 'the land of roses,' Bovino said, for all the roses that flourished there. The name Roseland stuck, even after the community was annexed into Chicago in 1890. Either way, becoming part of Chicago offered access to better infrastructure for sewers and roads, Bovino said. During the 20th Century, waves of Swedish, Irish, German, Polish and Italian immigrants arrived. Over time, a business district of sturdy brick and elaborately decorated terracotta facades sprang up. So did an assortment of frame houses bearing front porches with fancy gingerbread trim and plenty of brownstones and brick homes. A lot of homes were clad in shingles made of asbestos, which many people covered with siding, Bovino said. During Bovino's 18 years in Roseland, his family lived in a brick home, and later a frame home. The brick home at 113th and Prairie remains but the older wooden frame house is gone, he said. Like that home, others in the community have disappeared as well. 'There are fewer houses now on the 119th and 118th blocks of Lafayette,' Bovino said at a recent presentation at Calumet Historical Society. 'It's reverting back to prairie, but there are other parts of Roseland that are great. Sheldon Heights, near Fenger High School, looks like it never had a bad day.' Bovino also showed photos of local stores, restaurants, churches and favorite hangouts from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Many were taken by a local dentist, Dr. Gene Osello. An Italian Catholic, Bovino attended Mendel Catholic Preparatory High School. His parents met at a popular bowling alley called The Rosebowl and celebrated their marriage with more than 400 guests at Turner Hall, a banquet venue. 'I was born a year later in 1953,' Bovino said. 'It was a race to have children. My father was the oldest of nine. Bovino also shared images of family gatherings with aunts and uncles crammed into a small kitchen, and one of neighbors hanging out together on a front porch. 'There was lots of porch sitting with neighbors back then, instead of people just waving and driving by,' he said. A circa early 1960s image taken on the day of first holy communion ceremonies shows a long line of girls wearing white dresses and veils. 'When people said be fruitful and multiply, that's what they meant,' Bovino said. Of St. Anthony Catholic Church, he said, 'The steps were made of marble, and nobody knew how slippery they would be. Lots of people fell.' He also mentioned that parishioners formed a parade procession following the delivery of the church's 12 marble columns to be installed inside the church. The truck could not make it under a nearby underpass and had to be routed an extra mile out of the way with congregants following on foot. Bovino showed many photos of churches, representing a variety of Christian denominations — First Reformed Dutch, Lutheran, Methodist, Evangelical, Baptist and related ethnic groups. A member of Holy Rosary Irish, he said, 'Even now if I say I went to Holy Rosary, people ask, 'Holy Rosary Irish or Holy Rosary Slovak?'' Besides the fun and games at church carnivals, he said, 'You could get clams on the half shell with hot sauce and sheets of pizza bread the ladies rolled out.' Bovino also showed a Chicago Park District Field House at Palmer Park painted with colorful WPA murals, and Griffith Natatorium, where at one time boys and girls were not allowed to swim together. Pictures of formidable looking local schools followed, along with Roseland Theater, Gately's Peoples Store at 112th and Michigan Avenue and nearby S.S. Kresge's, also Root Brothers hardware store, a local jeweler, Panozzo Brothers Funeral Home, and Pullman Bank. The department store photos stirred memories for Marcia Zmuda, now a resident of South Holland and one of 57 people who attended the Calumet Historical Society presentation. 'I remember Roseland as a wonderful place to live and be raised,' she said. 'I remember going to the Gately's Peoples Store, and my first job was as a store clerk at the Kresge's.' Bovino was partial to the special breads made at Panetti's Italian Beef. Another popular fast-food place, Pit Chicken, he said, 'was a cruising spot like something out of American Graffiti.' He also recalled going to the Rexall Drugstore's soda fountain for milkshakes. Of the KarmelKorn Shoppe located at 113th and Michigan, he said, 'They'd open up the windows to draw people in with the smell.' Of the Jays Potato Chip factory once located in North Pullman just over the IC tracks from Roseland, Bovino said, 'Everybody knows Jays Potato Chips. If the wind was right, you could smell the chips frying, or the Sherwin Williams Plant (in Pullman), or the dump (landfill).' The photo Bovino showed of a potato chip bag bearing an old logo with the original company name Japp's, prompted a member of the audience to comment about the name change. 'After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, people stomped the bags in the stores,' the woman said. 'That was the fastest turnaround of any company name. It went from Japp's to Jays within a week.' For Bovino's presentation, people occupied every chair at Calumet Historical Society. 'We generally have a good turnout for our meetings, but this one was really good,' said Mike Wolski, president of the 204-member Calumet Historical Society which frequently hosts historical presentations that focus on Calumet City but also the Calumet region. 'Some of our members are from Roseland and we reach out to people beyond our membership.' One of the last and more recent images Bovino shared was of tidy Roseland homes surrounded by picket fences lined with showy rose blossoms. 'And this is a photo of people living there now, just enjoying their homes,' Bovino said. Along with good things in the works for Roseland, the image harkens back to the community's original name — Hope.
