WASHUNGTON — President Trump has relieved Border Patrol czar Greg Bovino of his Minnesota command. Bovino had become a hated symbol for brutish tactics in Trump’s military intrusion into Minnesota. Ill feelings intensified over the weekend when a Bovino detachment created a scuffle and fired multiple funds, perhaps 10, into nurse Alex Pretti at a Minneapolis street scene. Pretti died. Bovino was not at the scene, but his agents played out the savagery that he publicly advocated. Trump had endorsed Bovino’s tactics for weeks — until they became unsustainable in the face of massive public resistance. By demoting Bovino, not firing him, Trump saved spared Bovino some indignity. Bovino, age 57, said he was considering retirement to North Carolia and pick apples. To replace Bovino in, Trump dispatched Tom Homan to Minnesota take the lead on the immigration operation. About Homan, Trump sid: “Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me.” That chain-of-command would bypass Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security. Noem had been Bovino’s supervisor int he federal chain-of-command. Noem, a former South Dakota governor, who has been widely criticized in Washington as over her head and incompetent.
Bovino. Next assignment: Back to Rio Grande border. Retirement expected to follow.
Bovino profile
President Trump had assigned Bovino to Minnesota less than a month. For his Minnesota duty Bovino brought about 1,000 Border Patrol agents from the Mexico border to expand Trump’s unwelcome occupation force to arrest thousands of immigrants for deportation. Bovino quickly made himself the most hated person in the state. He cultivated a brutish image. Agents were told to break down doors without judicial search warrants and to rough up detainees. To this he was applauded by Tump and Trump’s Homeland Security chief Krisi Noem, who was Bovino’s immediate supervisor. Bovino cultivated a Napoleonic image that exploited 5-foot-4 frame. He proclaimed himself “commander at large,” a rank with no statutory basis and which conjured up aspirations of pre-empting the state’s elected leadership. In all this he was applauded Trump and Noem, to whom Bovino reported in the chain-of-command. He was easy to dislike. He self-designed a gloomily olive serge greatcoat that elicited a Nazi-esque image from he 1930s. The coat was replete with brass buttons and overdone with military-like patches and medals The coat also hearkened unflatteringly to the militarization of immigration enforcement in the 1954 movie “Operation Wetback.”
Minnesota misfit. With masked agents. Here he hadn’t yet pinned on the usual patches and medals on his greatcoat as macho swank. On this day Bovino himself hurled a tear gas cannister at Minnesota protesters assembled in a parking lot.
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