(AFP) – Gregory Bovino — the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids before being sidelined amid an outcry over two shooting deaths — has announced his retirement. Bovino, 55, told The New York Times Monday that he will retire in coming weeks from the US Border Patrol after decades of service.
Bovino shot to prominence in President Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House as the image-conscious head of US immigration raids in Democratic-run cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and, most notoriously, Minneapolis. Bovino was known for a gung-ho approach to raids for undocumented migrants. He became a fixture on television news, wearing either military-style tactical gear or a long, double-breasted green overcoat with wide lapels that critics said was meant to echo Nazi German military garb.
Bovino’s career imploded in Minneapolis, where he oversaw violent raids in which two US citizen protesters were shot and killed by federal agents. Bovino claimed in January that the second of those two fatalities, Alex Pretti, had been bent on carrying out a “massacre” because he was carrying a handgun. In fact, Pretti had a license for the weapon and did not brandish the gun — yet was shot several times after having been subdued by immigration agents.
Bovino caused outrage when he defended these agents and said they, not Pretti, were the victims. “The fact that they’re highly trained prevented any specific shootings of law enforcement, so good job for our law enforcement in taking him down before he was able to do that,” Bovino told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Amid angry criticism of the raids in Minneapolis, Trump eventually removed Bovino and replaced him with border policy chief Tom Homan, who was seen as more conciliatory. The administration announced the end of the Minneapolis raids, called Operation Metro Surge, on February 12.
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