Decryption | The face of migration repression

(New York) Wherever he goes, Gregory Bovino does his work with his face uncovered, unlike the masked men he commands during aggressive operations targeting irregular migrants.

Over the months, Americans have seen him make controversial remarks in front of journalists in Los Angeles, throw a tear gas canister at demonstrators in the Chicago suburbs, appear with his troops in the parking lot of a Home Depot store in Charlotte, North Carolina, and patrol on foot the streets of the Vieux Carré in New Orleans, where he is these days with more than 200 agents.

Others followed him on social networks, where his avatar shows him armed with a semi-automatic rifle and where he extols or justifies his actions in videos. “There is no such thing as a sanctuary state,” he says in a video accompanied by the song Powerby Kanye West, and where we see his agents chasing people in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Sacramento, California.

“This is how and this is why we ensure the security of our homeland,” he adds.

This is also how this short man with spiky hair became the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

From the border to Chicago

This status does not fail to amaze. After all, Gregory Bovino has worked since 1996 for the Border Patrol, an agency whose mission is to secure the borders of the United States. Since 2020, he has led police operations in the El Centro sector, which extends from San Diego and Imperial counties to the desert areas of California and Arizona.

So what was he doing in Chicago or Charlotte? Normally, the responsibility for apprehending illegal immigrants within the borders of the United States falls to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

But that agency is not working as quickly and aggressively as Trump administration officials, including Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, would like.

Hence this use of Border Patrol agents, some of whom have even replaced the heads of local ICE offices.

In this commotion, Gregory Bovino, 55, was given the title “commanding general” by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. When a reporter asked why the agent inherited the role, a spokeswoman for Kristi Noem responded, “He’s a badass.” »

A controversial raid

Gregory Bovino proved it in Chicago during Operation Midway Blitz. On September 30, 300 agents from the Border Patrol, the FBI and other agencies stormed a South Shore housing complex. Some of them landed on the roof after rappelling from a helicopter.

The building was allegedly “filled” with members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).

Gregory Bovino’s agents arrested 37 migrants, most of them illegal Venezuelans. They also handcuffed and detained numerous American citizens for several hours.

But they only confirmed two members of the TdA gang among the arrested migrants.

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker described Gregory Bovino as a cog in Donald Trump’s “march toward autocracy.” He is not the only official to have raised his voice about the “general commander”. A federal judge in Illinois accused him of lying when she said he threw a tear gas canister at demonstrators after being hit by a rock.

“The video proves otherwise,” Judge Sara Ellis concluded, ordering Mr. Bovino and his officers to wear body cameras.

“The worst of the worst”?

But Gregory Bovino, who has become a star of the MAGA movement, persists and signs, defending his actions and those of his agents, who do not hesitate to break car windows to arrest migrants.

This operation led to the arrest of 3,200 irregular migrants in one month. However, according to government data obtained last week by the Deportation Data Project, only 15% of those detained had previously been convicted of a crime and only 3% had been convicted of violent crimes.

Nevertheless: the Trump administration continues to justify its immigration repression operations by asserting that they aim to arrest and expel the “worst of the worst”. This is the case with Operation “Catahoula Crunch” in New Orleans, deployed since last Wednesday under the command of Gregory Bovino.

“Operation Catahoula Crunch will eliminate the worst of the worst from New Orleans, Louisiana,” Kristi Noem announced on X before accusing local officials of having “ignored the rule of law.”