Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol’s senior commander in charge of federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, will be transferred out of the city, according to a report citing anonymous sources.
His departure will come amid intense scrutiny of the federal government’s crackdown following two recent shootings by immigration agents who fatally shot protester Renee Nicole Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti in the city earlier this month.
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Here’s what we know:
Who is Greg Bovino?
For seven months, Mr. Bovino has been at the center of the U.S. government’s immigration crackdown.
He gained national attention last summer when he helped lead a massive operation in Los Angeles that led to more than 5,000 arrests. Since then, he has overseen similar enforcement actions in several Democratic-led cities, including Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and now Minneapolis.
Alongside his work in the field, Bovino has built a strong public profile by frequently sharing videos from operations and using social media to promote the agency and respond to critics. This style has made him famous and controversial.
In Minneapolis, a video of him walking down the street wearing a long green Army commander-style coat and yelling at protesters to get out of his way drew comparisons to a “fascist” aesthetic, including from some German commentators.
In Minneapolis, Mr. Bovino became the most visible federal officer in Operation Metro Surge, an initiative of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation has sparked intense controversy following two fatal Border Patrol shootings, first of Good in early January and then of Pretty, a 37-year-old ICU nurse.
In response to Preti’s shooting, Bovino defended the actions of the investigators, saying Preti “wanted to cause maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
“Their highly trained nature prevented him from firing any specific shots at law enforcement. We were very fortunate that our law enforcement was able to subdue him before that happened,” Bovino told CNN.
Witnesses, local officials and Preeti’s family dispute this account, saying Preeti was holding a cell phone, not a weapon, when she was shot.
Bovino was born in California in March 1970 and raised in North Carolina.
His interest in law enforcement took shape early on. In an interview last year, Bovino’s sister Natalie recalled how strongly Bovino reacted to the TV series “The Border,” which focuses on the U.S. Border Patrol.
“Greg was very excited because he loved the toughness and values of old-fashioned people,” she said, according to a report in British media The Times of London.
“Then he saw it and Border Patrol agents were criminals. Greg went home completely pissed off about that. From then on, he was like, ‘Hey, I want to play Border Patrol.’
Bovino’s father, Mike Bovino, was involved in a fatal crash in 1981 when he “drunk and crashed his truck head-on into her car,” killing a young woman, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
A judge ordered Mike Bovino to serve time in state prison “for treatment of alcoholism,” according to court records. He was sentenced to four months in prison, and reports say the case forced the sale of his family’s bar and premises. Greg’s mother, Betty Bovino, later filed for divorce and was awarded custody of the couple’s three children as part of the settlement.
Bovino joined the U.S. Border Patrol in 1996 and began his career in El Paso, Texas, a key Border Patrol hub.
Over the next decade, he moved into senior leadership roles throughout the Southwest, including Arizona and California, and in New Orleans in the Southeast.
More recently, with Trump’s return to the White House, Bovino has become one of the most recognizable faces in U.S. immigration enforcement.
Was Bovino fired?
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin denied rumors that Bovino had been fired, writing in a post on X that “Secretary Gregory Bovino has not been relieved of his duties.”
Who is Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar heading to Minneapolis?
Despite this, Mr. Bovino is not currently leading ICE’s operations in Minnesota.
Instead, President Donald Trump has put his so-called “border czar” Tom Homan in charge of an immigration crackdown in the Midwestern state.
Homan, 64, a longtime U.S. immigration official with more than 40 years of experience in border and immigration enforcement, became a key figure in President Barack Obama’s administration, leading ICE’s removal operations division. That branch of ICE is responsible for finding and removing people who have been ordered deported.
In 2015, while President Obama was president, Homan received the Presidential Rank Award, one of the highest honors for senior civil servants.
According to reports, while Trump was attending a retirement party in January 2017, John Kelly, Trump’s then-choice for Homeland Security secretary, asked him to remain with ICE. Homan accepted the offer over the weekend, becoming a leading figure in the first Trump administration after four tumultuous years.
Under the Obama administration, the United States carried out 432,000 deportations in 2013, the most in any year since records began until 2025. Under the first Trump administration, the number of deportations never exceeded 350,000. But in December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Trump administration had deported more than 600,000 people in its first 11 months in office, and that an additional 2.5 million people were “self-deported,” or voluntarily fled the country. As a result, the United States will have net negative immigration in 2025 for the first time in decades.
Homan, who was hired by President Trump during his second term to oversee border security, has become a central figure in the administration’s immigration crackdown. Now, his appointment in Minnesota expands the scope of his role to include controversial ICE actions far from the southern border.
“We’re sending Tom Homan to Minnesota tonight,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “He’s not involved in that field, but he knows and likes a lot of the people there. Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me,” the president added.
What is Homan’s position on immigration?
When Mr. Homan was appointed border czar, he was widely seen as someone who not only shared Mr. Trump’s hard-line views but also brought extensive practical experience in immigration enforcement and policy.
Homan paints a black-and-white picture of illegal immigration and makes no apologies for President Trump’s policy of targeting everyone in the country without proper documentation.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you should be concerned,” he said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the way it should be. Are you worried about getting a ticket like I’m speeding on the freeway? Are you worried about getting audited if you lie on your taxes?”
However, Homan himself has been accused of misconduct, and was reportedly recorded receiving a bag containing $50,000 in cash from an undercover FBI agent in September 2024. Homan and the Trump White House deny the accusations, but the administration has so far not explained what happened to the cash.
