Meet the man currently leading Border Patrol’s operations in LA

By Andrew Donohue, Sergio Olmos and Wendy Fry, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

The day after Congress certified President Donald Trump’s victory, Gregory Bovino led his Border Patrol agents hundreds of miles north, sweeping through Kern County in an audacious immigration raid that shocked the local agricultural community. 

At the time, Bovino, chief of the El Centro sector, said that his agents had a “predetermined list of targets,” many of whom had criminal records, before they set off for Kern County. “We did our homework,” he said. 

In the weeks after, both the factual and legal foundation of Bovino’s bold sweep crumbled. Border Patrol documents obtained by CalMatters showed that 77 of the 78 people his agents arrested had no prior record with the agency. 

Then, a federal judge ruled the wide-net sweep – based on random, warrantless stops where day laborers and farm workers congregate – likely violated the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches. Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security promised to re-train Bovino’s 900-plus agents on the Constitution. But that wasn’t enough. The judge issued an injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from conducting similar raids in California’s Central Valley. 

“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” said U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston.

It appears Bovino’s stock has only risen within the Trump administration since. 

On Thursday, Bovino – in his green uniform, with his high-and-tight hairdo – stood next to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and announced that he has been in charge of Customs and Border Protection operations in Los Angeles. Indeed, the immigration raids that sparked the protests have all the hallmarks of Bovino’s Kern County operation. 

Federal agents picked up day laborers outside of a Home Depot in Westlake. They went after car wash workers in Los Angeles and garment workers in Downtown LA. And farm workers have reported that Border Patrol agents have been conducting operations around the strawberry fields of Oxnard.  

Bovino doesn’t distinguish between field workers or paleteros and fentanyl dealers. To him, they all fit one category: “Bad people.”

“For Customs and Border Protection, that’s why we are here right now, is to remove those bad people and bad things, whether illegal aliens, drugs or otherwise,” he said at the press conference Thursday. “We are here and we’re not going away.” 

At this point, Bovino’s rapid rise from one of 20 section chiefs around the country to the face of Trump’s aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles almost seems inevitable. His team employs a group of five agents to make videos, cranking out dramatic, fictionalized videos portraying migrants crossing the border as menaces with a bloodlust to commit crimes. 

Bovino seems to relish the camera himself. The El Centro sector posts staged photos of him in uniform, including a closeup with an AR-15, and one on a white horse in the desert, cradling a shotgun. In an interview with CalMatters in February, flanked by a wall of armed agents, he taunted his other Border Patrol counterparts. “Twenty sectors in the U.S. Border Patrol, and we do call ourselves the ‘Premiere Sector,’” he said with a smile. “So please let those other chiefs know we said that.”  

Bovino likes to praise President Dwight Eisenhower, who led the largest deportation in American history, rounding up 1.3 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans in 1954. The first buses deporting migrants – in what was called “Operation Wetback” – rolled out of El Centro over 70 years ago. 

The Kern County raids were pitched as a “proof of concept” for how the Border Patrol could be mobilized for mass deportation operations away from the border. It’s exactly the kind of operation that, according to the Wall Street Journal, top White House aide Stephen Miller wanted to see when he convened top immigration officials in late May and demanded more aggressive action. Miller, the Journal reported, told officials they didn’t need targeted lists of immigrants – they should instead just go to Home Depots, inspiring the LA raids. 

Now, Bovino, at the same press conference in which agents handcuffed Sen. Alex Padilla after the senator tried asking questions of Noem, said he’s sticking around.

“You’ll continue to see us in Los Angeles,” he said. “Not going anywhere soon.” 

A new series of raids in California

Bovino labeled the Kern County sweeps “Operation Return to Sender.” Over three days, his agents detained day laborers, farm workers and others in a Home Depot parking lot, outside a convenience store and along a highway between orchards.  

The ACLU sued on behalf of United Farm Workers, arguing that the indiscriminate stops violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. 

The judge hasn’t yet ruled on the full case, but found the ACLU was likely to succeed, and issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Border Patrol agents from taking similar actions. That restricts them from stopping people unless they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in violation of U.S. immigration law. It also bars agents from carrying out warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. 

The injunction only applies to the Central Valley, but similar legal challenges could await after the latest wave of sweeps.

Advocates are still trying to get a handle on the scope and details of federal actions over the last week. 

Just after dawn on Tuesday, Border Patrol agents and other federal officers swept across Ventura, Kern, and Tulare counties, according to the United Farm Workers. 

UFW provided CalMatters with a video that shows a white and green Border Patrol truck pulling up to a business in Moorpark. Two masked agents emerged and arrested a man in a baseball cap and neon yellow work shirt who was opening the gate just before 9 a.m.

A video shared on social media by ABC7 shows officers in green Border Patrol uniforms chasing a farmworker through an Oxnard field. Another video shot from a different angle shows a green and white Border Patrol truck racing along the edge of the farm fields. 

The agents appear to catch the worker, but it is unclear what happens after that. “There’s a lot we don’t know yet,” said Antonio de Loera-Brust, a spokesman for UFW. The labor union representing farm workers is working to contact families affected by the raids. 

Other videos show white and green vehicles typically used by Border Patrol, but so far, the agency has not confirmed their participation. A spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for Border Patrol, told CalMatters to direct our questions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A spokesperson for ICE told CalMatters to contact Customs and Border Protection with our questions. 

“We’ve seen videos of Border Patrol trucks tearing through farmlands. I’ve heard reports of operations in farmlands, and we’re still investigating if the court’s order has been violated,” said Bree Bernwanger, an attorney with ACLU Northern California, which brought the Kern County suit.

“The Fourth Amendment really prohibits immigration agents from doing sweeps of communities, from doing racial profiling, from targeting people just because they’re Brown or looking like a farm worker.”

Oxnard Mayor Luis McArthur said his office has also received disturbing reports of immigration officials trying to enter agricultural fields and conducting vehicle stops. 

“These actions are completely unjustified and harmful. They create chaos and distress in our community without contributing to public safety,” he said. “The individuals affected by these operations; they’re not criminals. They’re hardworking families who make meaningful contributions to our local economy and to our greater community.”

Elizabeth Strater, vice president of the UFW, said that a number of employers stopped federal agents from accessing their land. 

“All across California one thing that is good to hear is that we can confirm in a number of locations federal agents attempted to enter a worksite and were repelled because the employer took the practical steps, like gates, and told the agents that they couldn’t come onto the property,” she said. 

In February, Bovino denied that his agents had gone after farmworkers. 

“For us, targeting agricultural workers at their job, absolutely not. That has no merit,” he said. “But when Border Patrol comes into contact with illegal aliens, you’re going to get arrested.”

He promised to take his fight across the state. “Our area goes through Central California all the way to the Oregon border, so anywhere in that area, we are going to go where that threat is, and where we can do the most damage to bad people and bad things as we possibly can,” Bovino said. 

For now, that’s Los Angeles. Bovino said at the Thursday press conference he had several hundred agents and officers there. 

“Many millions of illegal aliens have passed across that border over the past several years. It’s our job to get them out,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to do and what we’re doing right now.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.