While leading immigration raids in Chicago last fall and other big cities after, former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino picked regular fights on social media with protesters, Democratic public officials and the media.
Since retiring last month, however, Bovino has found a new target for posts on X: his former employers in the Trump administration.
The onetime face of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies has taken to criticizing the federal government for being soft on immigration, reflecting what one former official said is a “food fight” at the White House.
In a April 15 post, the Department of Homeland Security posted the disputed claim that “each illegal immigrant costs the American taxpayer nearly $8,776 every single year” and vowed to put “the American worker FIRST.”
Bovino responded: “Then restart mass deportations and quit messing around with it.”
It was the most direct shot from Bovino at Trump officials, but not the last. Bovino, who did not respond to a request for comment, has regularly used his X account to blast “gubners” from blue states and often accuses his critics of being “triggered!” He engages with even crass comments, responding “now now” to people who mock him in personal terms and making fun of people who do not have big followings.
But peppered in between the back-and-forth comments with garden-variety Internet trolls are criticisms of his onetime colleagues.
In response to a tweet asking, “How the hell did (Trump) let you ‘retire?'” Bovino responded: “Mass deportations vs worst of the worst.”
Another user asked Bovino why the Trump administration doesn’t begin mass deportations. He responded: “They were but we stopped in Minneapolis.”
Homeland Security did not address specific questions from the Tribune about Bovino’s commentary. But in a statement, the agency disputed the general thrust of Bovino’s posts.
“ICE is NOT slowing down,” the statement said. “Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump’s promise to the America safe again.”
Still, Bovino’s comments about “mass deportations vs worst of the worst” underscores the central tension of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration.
Should the government arrest people indiscriminately for alleged immigration infractions or pursue a more targeted approach?
How Gregory Bovino became a face of Donald Trump’s mass deportations and ended his career
In Chicago, the government unleashed Operation Midway Blitz last fall, which led to widespread racial profiling, civil rights abuses and the teargassing of at least eight neighborhoods in response to largely peaceful protests.
Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, an Obama-era appointee, told the Tribune Bovino’s comments reflect “the food fight within the Trump administration” over policy.
At first, Kerlikowske said, Trump officials like so-called border czar Tom Homan pushed for operations targeting “the worst of the worst.” But that changed, Kerlikowske said, and the administration launched wide-scale raids in California, Chicago and Minneapolis, with tragic results.
“All of a sudden, they get into just going after numbers,” Kerlikowske said. “In order to get the numbers up, they were going to the car washes and the Home Depot lot. It didn’t turn out well in (Los Angeles). It turned out worse in Chicago with Judge Sara Ellis. Then Minneapolis turned out to be a disaster.”
Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said it’s not clear whether changes with how the Trump administration operates are “optics” versus real shifts in strategy.
But, she said, “there’s clearly been a decision made explicitly or implicitly that they don’t want the same kind of visibility being given to enforcement work that had been the case earlier.”
Bovino left Minneapolis in a controversy after federal agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti. He was removed of his leadership over roving bands of Border Patrol agents in big cities after a narrative he and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about Pretti’s shooting fell apart.
Bovino retired shortly after.
He has since made waves with the claim that 100 million people are living in the United States without authorization, a number which would be about one-third of the country.
In an interview that Bovino reposted to his X account earlier this month, he said, “Let’s make it so for them to live, to work, to recreate, to do anything in the United States that they have no choice but to self-deport.”
