Greg Bovino was removed from his position in January after a controversial incident that resulted in the deaths of two American citizens during a federal operation.
A former US Border Patrol commander has called for comprehensive immigration action, saying life should be made so difficult for illegal immigrants that they are forced to leave the country.Greg Bovino, who recently retired, made the controversial statements in a video interview in which he claimed that current law enforcement efforts to combat immigration are not strong enough. “We need to increase the number of DHS agents in all major cities. We need to make it so difficult for them to live, work, have children and do anything in the United States that they have no choice but to self-deport,” he said.He also refused to focus on targeting dangerous criminals, warning that this would send the wrong message.
“They should have an incentive to self-deport,” Bovino added. “To say we are targeting the ‘worst of the worst’ is to signal to the majority of illegal immigrants that they are safe from deportation.”Going further, he claimed that the scale of undocumented migration was much larger than publicly available data says. “There is a lot of work to be done… They all have to go. We are 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 transferred to California in January following a controversial incident in which two American citizens, Renee Nicole Judd and Alex Peretti, 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by ICE agents.He retired at the end of March, after which his access to official government social media accounts was revoked.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 remains active online through a personal account.In recent days, Bovino has sparked controversy for amplifying a blog post that praised him as “Leader Greg Bovino” and described his policies as a “justification for mass deportations.” The article was written under the name “Federale,” an anonymous figure associated with extremist content online.The account that wrote the article has a history of posting racist and anti-Semitic content, including praise for Adolf Hitler and using offensive slurs. The anonymous writer is linked to platforms linked to white nationalist views, the Daily Beast reported.This adds to Bovino’s previous criticisms. He has previously been accused of using offensive language toward colleagues and appeared in a government video that sparked backlash over images that some compared to Nazi symbolism.
