The commander-at-large of the US Border Patrol, known for its aggressive and illegal tactics, came under criticism after his agents killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis during a protest.
With his forceful tactics and long olive-green coat with brass buttons, which his critics describe as something straight out of a Wehrmacht uniform catalogue, Gregory Bovino has become the face of the militarization of the fight against illegal immigration in the United States. Bovino, who led the US Border Patrol (one of the federal agencies tasked with anti-immigration operations) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, became notorious for a particularly aggressive crackdown on those presumed to be undocumented migrants, as well as on demonstrators who protested the Trump administration's methods.
On Saturday, January 24, after nurse Alex Pretti was shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, Bovino wasted no time in stating his conclusions. "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement," he said, disregarding videos that, no matter which angle they were shot from, showed a man being beaten by five or six combat gear-clad officers and then shot while on the ground.
On Monday, January 26, Bovino and his teams felt the backlash after Donald Trump re-evaluated the popularity of his mass deportation policy. The Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, announced after a phone call with the US president that the agents Trump had deployed for his immigration crackdown would be leaving the city as of Tuesday. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt stated that Bovino was "a great professional" and would "continue to lead Customs and Border Patrol throughout and across the country."
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