Greg Bovino was removed from his post in January after a controversial incident involving the deaths of two US citizens during a federal operation.
A former US Border Patrol commander has called for sweeping immigration measures, saying life should be made so difficult for undocumented migrants that they are forced to leave the country.Greg Bovino, who recently retired, made the controversial remarks in a video interview in which he claimed that current anti-immigration enforcement efforts are not strong enough. “We need surges of DHS agents into all the major cities. We need to make it so hard for them to live, to work, to procreate, to do anything in the United States that they have no choice but to self-deport,” he said.He also rejected the focus on targeting serious offenders, warning that it sends the wrong message. “They must have incentive to self-deport. Saying we’re targeting the ‘worst of the worst’ is signaling to the majority of illegals that they’re safe from deportations,” Bovino added.Pushing further, he claimed the scale of undocumented immigration was far larger than what publicly available data says. “There’s a lot more work to be done… They all need to go. We’re talking about potentially 100 million people still living here illegally.”Bovino previously played an important role in early immigration crackdowns under President Donald Trump, overseeing operations in Blue cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. He was later reassigned to California in January following a controversial incident in which two US citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by ICE agents.He retired at the end of March, after which his access to official government social media accounts was revoked. However, he has remained active online through a personal account.In recent days, Bovino stirred row for amplifying a blog post that praised him as “Comandante Greg Bovino” and described his policies as “Vindication for mass deportations.” The article was written under the name “Federale,” an anonymous figure linked to extremist online content.The account that wrote the article has a history of posting racist and antisemitic content, including praise for Adolf Hitler and the use of offensive slurs. The anonymous writer is linked to platforms associated with white nationalist views, reports the Daily Beast.This adds to earlier criticism of Bovino. He has been accused before of using offensive language about colleagues and appeared in a government video that drew backlash for imagery some compared to Nazi symbolism.
