Greg Bovino was removed from his post in January following a controversial incident involving the deaths of two U.S. citizens during a federal operation.
A former U.S. Border Patrol commander is calling for sweeping immigration measures, saying life should be made so difficult for undocumented immigrants that they are forced to leave the country.Greg Bovino, who recently retired, made the controversial remarks during a video interview in which he claimed that current anti-immigration enforcement is not strong enough. “We need to send large numbers of Homeland Security agents to every major city. We need to make it so difficult for them to live, work, have children, do anything in the United States that they have no choice but to self-deport,” he said.He also declined to focus on targeting serious offenders, warning that it sent the wrong message. “They have to have an incentive to self-deport. To say we’re targeting the ‘worst of the worst’ is a signal to most illegal immigrants that they will not be deported,” Bovino added.He further claimed that the scale of undocumented immigration is far greater than public data indicates. “There’s still a lot of work to be done… They all need to leave. We’re talking about potentially 100 million people still living here illegally.”Bovino previously played a key role in the early immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump, overseeing operations in blue cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. He was later reassigned to California following the controversial killings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, by ICE agents in January.He retired at the end of March and has since had his access to the government’s official social media accounts revoked. However, he remains active online through a personal account.Bovino has stirred controversy in recent days by amplifying a blog post that praised him as “Commander Greg Bovino” and described his policies as “justifying mass deportations.” The article was written under the name “Federale,” an anonymous figure associated with extremist online content.The account that wrote the article has a history of posting racist and anti-Semitic content, including praising Adolf Hitler and using offensive slurs. The anonymous writer has ties to platforms associated with white nationalist views, The Daily Beast reported.This heightened previous criticism of Bovino. He has previously been accused of using offensive language toward colleagues and appeared in a government video that sparked backlash over some imagery that was compared to Nazi symbolism.
