{"id":396923,"date":"2026-01-29T13:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396923\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:26:12","slug":"who-is-us-border-chief-gregory-bovino-the-little-napoleon-with-a-viral-coat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/396923\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is US border chief Gregory Bovino, the \u2018little Napoleon\u2019 with a viral coat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1982 action movie The Border, Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel play border guards posted along the Texas frontier. The film sets up their federal force as a bunch of gunslingers operating with little to no moral code.<\/p>\n

But the way an 11-year-old Gregory Bovino saw it, watching at the cinema in his hometown of North Carolina, Keitel and his posse were the heroes, foot soldiers fuelled by a sense of duty and patriotism.<\/p>\n

The Border would set the course for Bovino\u2019s life, inspiring him to join his local police department straight out of college.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward 30 years and he finds himself the star of President Trump\u2019s immigration show as commander-at-large of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).<\/p>\n

His stage: the streets of Minnesota, where he has filmed Hollywood-style promotional videos sporting a buzzcut and a brass-buttoned, olive-green greatcoat (German media describe it as having a \u201cNazi aesthetic\u2019) marching alongside masked and heavily armed officers set to rock music:<\/p>\n

Photograph by Mike Madison for The Times<\/p>\n

But the brutality with which he and his agents have been carrying out immigration raids has begun to draw criticism even among Republican allies of the president after the killing over the weekend of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

In an apparent response to the backlash over Pretti\u2019s death, the Trump administration withdrew Bovino<\/a> from Minneapolis on Tuesday and suspended access to his social-media accounts, which he had mostly been using to post emojis and bait Democratic politicians.<\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/p>\n

Alex Pretti was shot dead last week<\/p>\n

US DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS\u2019 AFFAIRS\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u2022 Who is Alex Pretti? Minneapolis shooting victim<\/a><\/p>\n

Like most of the men and women he has been rounding up, Bovino, 55, has his own immigration story. His great-grandfather Michele emigrated in 1909 from Calabria, southern Italy, to Pennsylvania\u2019s coal country to work as a miner. Michele would later change his name to Michael to better assimilate.<\/p>\n

\"US<\/p>\n

Bovino in his controversial greatcoat<\/p>\n

MUSTAFAH HUSSAIN FOR CNN<\/p>\n

His wife and four children had stayed behind in the village of Aprigliano \u2014 a region lacking opportunity and plagued by organised crime \u2014 before joining him in the mid-1920s and becoming naturalised citizens.<\/p>\n

Gregory Kent Bovino was born half a century later in 1970 in San Bernardino County, California, where his father served on a military base after being drafted during the Vietnam War. Two years later his parents, Michael and Betty, moved the family across the country to Blowing Rock, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Michael bought Bovino his first gun aged eight, and taught him how to shoot rabbits and squirrels. \u201cHe was hard,\u201d Bovino\u2019s sister Natalie said of their late father. \u201cToughness, hard work that baked in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Has Minnesota won the battle against ICE?<\/a><\/p>\n

She remembered how excited her brother had been to watch The Border. \u201cGreg was so psyched because he loved the toughness and the values of all these old-timers,\u201d she said in an interview last year. \u201cThen he watched it, and the Border Patrol person was a criminal. Greg came home totally pissed about it. Since then, he was like, \u2018Dude, I want to do Border Patrol.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The family fell apart around this time. Mike Bovino killed a young woman when he drunkenly crashed his truck into her car, having shut up his bar The Library Club late one night in 1981. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of death by motor vehicle and spent four months in prison. He was forced to sell the bar and the family struggled financially, which led to the parents divorcing three years later. <\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

The Border starred Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel<\/p>\n

ALAMY\/UNIVERSAL\/EVERETT COLLECTION<\/p>\n

Bovino attended Watauga High School, where staff remembered a middling sportsman who enjoyed wrestling but lacked both the height and strength to make it far.<\/p>\n

Lee Stroupe, an old coach of Bovino\u2019s, recalled a young man who \u201cwas not bashful\u201d and who \u201cliked snakes\u201d. \u201cHe knew exactly where to find a snake,\u201d he told the Chicago Sun-Times. \u201cWe don\u2019t have many poisonous one up here in the mountains, but Greg somehow knew exactly where to find them.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to reports Bovino married and had children, but next to nothing about his family is available online. Bovino began his CBP career in 1996 and quickly rose through the ranks, serving in tactical units and later leading sectors in New Orleans and El Centro in California.<\/p>\n

It was there he earned a reputation as a strict enforcer who didn\u2019t always play by the rules, and as a boss who had a flair for the dramatic. He once invited reporters to watch him swim across an irrigation canal in Southern California\u2019s Imperial Valley, hoping it would serve as a deterrent to any migrants thinking of crossing.<\/p>\n

Jenn Budd, author of the book Against the Wall: My Journey from Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist, researched Bovino\u2019s early years in CBP and described him as \u201cthe Liberace of the Border Patrol\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just a little Napoleon who wants you to think that he is the most moral and capable guy in the world, and everything around you is dangerous but he\u2019s the one who\u2019s going to save you,\u201d Budd said. \u201cIt\u2019s all a show for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

ICE officers raid south Minneapolis<\/p>\n

VICTOR J BLUE\/BLOOMBERG\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Bovino was leading the El Centro district during the final year of Trump\u2019s first term in 2020. He was full of rage at what he saw as progress on immigration control being undone when President Biden relaxed border security, allowing millions of illegal immigrants to cross into the country.<\/p>\n

Bovino was briefly relieved of command in 2023 after he testified critically about conditions along the border under the Biden administration. He was also investigated for posting incendiary messages on social media, including one in which he called two Yemeni citizens terrorists.<\/p>\n

That same year, while serving as head of CBP in New Orleans, he was sued by two black officers who were looked over for promotion in favour of a white one, a friend of Bovino\u2019s. A court found an email sent by that officer comparing Bovino to a Confederate general and the New Orleans office to a unit of Black Union soldiers. The judge found evidence of racial bias in the hiring. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reached an out-of-court settlement.<\/p>\n

After Trump was re-elected, Bovino worked hard to be noticed. Two weeks before Trump\u2019s inauguration, he sent dozens of agents to arrest migrants at petrol stations and along the highway.<\/p>\n

When asked by reporters at the White House why Bovino was chosen to lead the force, Tricia McLaughlin, DHS spokeswoman, replied simply: \u201cBecause he\u2019s a badass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was impressed not only by Bovino\u2019s long service in CBP but his unapologetic machismo. The president saw him as the strongman who would help him fulfil the central promise of his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Bovino has said in interviews over the years that his main concern is to protect what he calls \u201cMa and Pa America\u201d from bad people and bad things that cross the border. \u201cWhat happens at the border never stays at the border,\u201d he told a podcast in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Trump clashes with NRA and says Pretti shouldn\u2019t have carried gun<\/a><\/p>\n

His immigration sweeps have stretched far beyond CBP\u2019s usual remit, into midwestern cities including Chicago and Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Illegal crossings at the southern border have reached historic lows and the administration has been using an expansive definition of the border to justify Bovino\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

Bovino has coined the phrase \u201cturn and burn\u201d to describe his enforcement strategy, which often entails officers jumping out of unmarked rental vans to ambush immigrant day labourers at places such as Home Depot.<\/p>\n

He has been accused of using racial profiling to round up Hispanic men, women and children, despite claims he is apprehending only the \u201cmost dangerous of criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bovino said his agents did not profile someone because of skin colour alone, but could use a \u201ctotality of factors\u201d to make the call. \u201cAre you panic-stricken? Are your eyes wide? Do you look furtive?\u201d he said. \u201cHow are you looking different than those other 1,000 people that I\u2019ve encountered on the street that day?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some cities, including Minneapolis, have risen up in a protest, which has been met by teargas and rubber bullets fired by CBP agents.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the administration\u2019s aggressive mass-deportation push see Bovino as a hero, one modelled on Harvey Keitel\u2019s antagonist Cat. But critics see him as pushing legal and political lines, and Democrats have drawn stark historical parallels between Bovinos\u2019s force and the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg Bovino dressed up as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb. Greg Bovino, secret police, private army, masked men, people disappearing quite literally, no due process,\u201d Gavin Newsom, California\u2019s governor, said recently. Bovino claimed he had had the coat for more than 25 years, and got it from the Border Patrol.<\/p>\n

\"US<\/p>\n

Bovino is flanked by federal agents in Minneapolis<\/p>\n

OCTAVIO JONES\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

The tactics of Bovino and his officers have even begun reaching the courts. Bovino\u2019s conduct during last year\u2019s Chicago operation drew criticism from a federal judge, who ruled that his descriptions of events were not supported by video evidence.<\/p>\n

The US District Judge Sara Ellis found last month that Bovino was not hit in the head with a rock before he deployed tear gas, which he claimed justified his use of force. The judge said Bovino had admitted he lied.<\/p>\n

Local officials described the dramatic scene as a little more than a photo op for Bovino, who later shared footage of it on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe laughs when they call him out on the stuff, and it\u2019s just a bro thing,\u201d Budd said. \u201cHe\u2019s just going around with his bros, just capturing migrants and people of colour and harassing people. They will lie constantly, like you saw in the Chicago courts. They will not think twice about doing it, and nobody will hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1982 action movie The Border, Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel play border guards posted along the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-396923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}