Gregory Bovino’s immigration crackdown complicated his legacy back home in Imperial County

Days before Donald Trump became president for the second time, Gregory Bovino led a Border Patrol raid in Central California hundreds of miles from the southern border Trump sees as a sieve.

Dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” it catapulted Bovino into the national spotlight where he remained for a year, overseeing military-style operations in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and Minneapolis even farther from Mexico.

Now Bovino’s time as Border Patrol Commander at Large has ended even more dramatically after Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis killed two protesters who were U.S. citizens. Now he is no longer in Minnesota or in his role. Instead, he is back home in Imperial County, where he oversaw the El Centro Sector of the Border Patrol for five years in relative obscurity.

Bovino wasn’t a household name in this county of 180,000 residents but that changed after he led droves of agents into cities well beyond the southern border – and more recently with nationwide protests over the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But even now, several people shown his photo last week upon word of his return didn’t recognize him.

For more than a year, he was the face of the most hardline tactics used in President Trump’s massive deportation campaign. Supporters raved about his approach and his aesthetic.

He told federal agents in Los Angeles that it was “our f–—– city.” He threw a canister of thick green smoke to disperse a crowd in Minneapolis while he was wearing a combat helmet and vest. Critics said an overcoat he has worn alongside agents calls to mind the Gestapo.

On social media, videos of Border Patrol agents dressed in military fatigues and helmets, smashing car windows and yanking people from vehicles went viral. In lawsuits naming Bovino, his agents were accused of using excessive force and racially profiling people with brown skin outside of Home Depots or areas popular among immigrants. 

The scenes across the country look nothing like the daily reality in Imperial Valley. The sector has in recent decades seen some of the fewest migrant crossings of any region along the southern border. The desert heat – which breaks well into the triple digits in the summer – is thought to push most migrants traveling north to cross through more forgiving parts of the border. The Border Patrol are not seen as invaders in the valley. They’re seen as integral.

Border Patrol vehicles are ubiquitous in parts of the valley, and the relationship between the green-uniformed agents and many residents has generally been amicable over the years.

In a county with a nearly 20% unemployment rate, and where one in five children live below the poverty line, the Border Patrol is among the top employers along with the Sheriff’s Office and two state prisons. 

“It is a community that lives from law enforcement,” said Marina Arteaga, an immigration advocate in the area.  

Boxed in by San Diego to the west, Riverside to the north and Yuma, Arizona, to the east, Imperial County residents, nine in 10 of whom are Latino, turn to the Border Patrol not away from it. Yet nearly one in three people in the region were born in another country, mostly Mexico.

Before dawn every morning, farmworkers stream north through the port of entry in Calexico to work in fields in Imperial County which supplies, along with neighboring Coachella Valley and Yuma, about 90% of the country’s winter vegetables. 

The region is known as the country’s “winter salad bowl.” 

Here, Bovino and his agents were a regular feature at community events. Online photos show Bovino on horseback at a holiday parade and rodeo and smiling alongside the Brawley police chief, other officials and families, holding a sign for autism awareness. 

Last Thursday, after Bovino was believed to have left Minneapolis, a small group of protestors held signs outside the El Centro Sector headquarters, anticipating his return. 

Earlier that week, a video posted on X showed Bovino in front of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota with a message for his team. The agents who shot Pretti, who Bovino initially defended as “victims,” a claim belied by video of the shooting, had just been placed on leave. 

“I’m very proud of what you, the mean green machine, are doing in Minneapolis right now,” Bovino said in the video. “I also want you to know that I’ve got your back now and always.”

Bovino’s final act on the national stage – his staunch defense of the agents who killed Pretti – earned him condemnation across the country. In the valley, his legacy is more complicated.  

‘Our family members’

From above, the Imperial Valley is a mosaic of alternating green and brown squares – agricultural fields – in the shape of a mitten, extending south from the Salton Sea. A handful of cities run through the middle with Calexico to the south and Calipatria to the north.

Residents of these cities say they feel more like small towns, though. It’s what many who live there love about the place. Residents will tell you it’s also what makes Border Patrol agents not faceless figures, but neighbors, friends and family members.

The agents have kids in the local schools, too. 

But when Bovino became Commander at Large, Imperial Valley residents suddenly saw the top Border Patrol agent in their community leading some of the most controversial activities of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. 

A year ago, he told inewsource that, “The handcuffs are off” as he set his sights on immigration enforcement activities across the nation. Now, he isn’t giving any interviews at all.

inewsource tried to interview Bovino for this story, but an agent with the El Centro Sector declined The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

In response to reports of Bovino’s reassignment, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that “Chief Gregory Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties” and that he “is a key part of the President’s team and a great American.” 

In an interview with Fox News last week, Trump said Bovino’s reassignment, including the deployment of Border Czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, wasn’t a pullback, but a “little bit of a change.”

“Bovino’s very good, but he’s a pretty out- there kind of a guy and in some cases that’s good,” Trump said. “Maybe it wasn’t good here.”  

Administration officials have said the crackdowns on cities across the country are about removing the “worst of the worst” criminals from the community and improving public safety. They blamed the sanctuary cities they targeted, which in general limit cooperation between immigration authorities and local law enforcement, for letting criminals roam free. 

Local leaders in those cities countered that it was the federal government, not immigrants, who brought danger to their cities. As federal agents strode streets, protests erupted in some places, fueling sometimes violent clashes between civilians and immigration authorities. 

In Los Angeles in July, Bovino led dozens of armed agents, some on horseback, through MacArthur Park in one of the city’s most significant immigrant communities. Military vehicles were stationed nearby and a Black Hawk helicopter buzzed overhead. The operation drew swift backlash from Angelenos, including Mayor Karen Bass.

This week, in her State of the City address, Bass recalled Bovino’s operation in the park. She was among the first politicians in the nation to confront Bovino and his tactics as the federal immigration crackdown took hold in the city. 

“Oh, where is he today?” Bass quipped in the address, poking at Bovino’s reassignment.

‘Chaos in the valley’

Bovino has been a cheerful participant for years at the El Centro Christmas parade, but his agents took a different tack in Chicago where residents said Border Patrol agents disrupted a Halloween parade for kids. Video verified by ABC News showed agents deploying tear gas and tackling and arresting several people, including U.S. citizens.

In early November, Bovino again made national headlines when a federal judge in Chicago found he lied during a sworn interview about his and his agents’ tactics in the city. Bovino initially said he was hit by a rock right before he threw tear gas canisters at protesters. Video evidence showed otherwise, and Bovino later said he was “mistaken.”

On the day that Bovino was deposed in a federal court in the Windy City, across the country in Imperial Valley, he was used as promotional material for an upcoming event hosted by a local police department.

That day, Nov. 4, Brawley Police posted a flyer on Instagram featuring then-Police Chief Jimmy Duran next to Bovino, both on horseback. The flyer promoted a kick-off horse ride for the Brawley Cattle Call Rodeo, a signature event in the valley.

Such examples showcase the stark differences between how Bovino led Border Patrol agents in cities across the country and how they acted in their own community for the years that Bovino led the sector. 

John Moreno is the principal at Calexico High School. He served on the City Council and as mayor from 2008 to 2016 and his family has been in the community for generations. He said he hasn’t seen anything “that would compare to something in Minneapolis or Chicago or some of these other cities. I don’t see that happening here.”

There has been some activity in the valley, though. Immigration advocates say federal authorities made arrests in Seeley, a small town east of El Centro, on Saturday. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request from inewsource to confirm the arrests. 

Some people worry that Bovino’s return might mean locals see the more aggressive enforcement style he championed elsewhere. Esperanza Castillo, originally from Los Angeles, is among them. 

Her notary office is steps from the border. On a recent afternoon, a Border Patrol vehicle was parked on her block, facing the border wall and her doorway, as Castillo worked into the evening. 

She said some of her clients fear coming into her office, even those with legal status to be in the U.S. They heard Bovino could be coming back and worry he will “make a big chaos in the valley,” she said.

Castillo also worries for her three kids. She wants them to be prepared even though they are U.S. citizens.

“I scanned and I emailed all three of my children their passports, their birth certificates, social security cards, everything, Castillo said. “Even their immunization record.” 

Such fears aren’t universal. 

One woman at Bucklin Park in El Centro on Thursday said she generally supports the president’s strict immigration enforcement. She’s originally from Mexico, but moved to the area with her husband several years ago. 

The region’s biggest challenge is the lack of job opportunities, she said, and she viewed the wave of migrant arrivals under the previous administration as having a negative impact on the economy. 

“I think it’s a really complicated subject, but I really trust my president right now,” she said. 

‘It could happen here’

In a region with such close ties to law enforcement – and to Bovino – few local government officials have spoken out about his return.   

Multiple messages to city councils in Brawley, Calexico and Imperial City as well as the Imperial County Board of Supervisors went unanswered. 

Mario Renteria, the public information officer for El Centro, said in a text message that the city “won’t be providing any interviews regarding Mr. Greg Bovino.” 

inewsource also requested interviews with the National Border Patrol Council, which is the agency’s union, and the Republican Party of Imperial County. Neither agreed to interviews or provided statements. 

Those who have commented publicly have condemned Bovino’s actions across the country and that he could bring those tactics back to the valley. 

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, said in a statement last week that he was “alarmed” by the enforcement tactics Bovino oversaw across the country. A congressman since 2013, he said he has received “growing concerns” from U.S. citizens “being racially profiled, pulled over, harassed, and pressured to prove their citizenship by showing passports.”

Michael Luellen, the 21-year-old mayor of Calipatria, deplores Bovino’s return to the valley but said the problem is not the agents on the ground in El Centro but the orders from the Trump administration.

“It’s the leadership that keeps pushing these reckless policies onto our neighbors without accountability, without any transparency, and without the trust of our community,” Luellen said. 

Imperial County’s politics have been shifting. After rejecting Trump in 2016 and 2020 and not giving a Republican presidential candidate a majority since George H.W. Bush in 1988, voters supported Trump over Kamala Harris by less than 500 votes in the 2024 election. Then last year, they supported the passage of Proposition 50, a redistricting measure to give California Democrats five more seats in Congress. The party cast the vote as a referendum on Trump. 

Residents have expressed concern about immigration enforcement in the valley in recent months. A small number of demonstrators took to the streets in February 2025 to protest immigration arrests. More than 300 showed up for the “No Kings” protest against President Trump in October, some of them with concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

In May, Duran, the Brawley police chief who was serving as city manager at the time, said in a council meeting that the city had received calls from citizens who were “concerned about Border Patrol operations in our city.” 

Duran said Bovino had sent a dozen agents to Brawley for a drug operation over several days earlier that month and they had made seven drug-related arrests, issued several citations and seized about an ounce of meth, fentanyl and marijuana combined.

“I want to start by thanking the United States Border Patrol and Chief Bovino, because what they did on May 8 and 9 really made a difference in our community, it really helped us out,” Duran said. “The fact that they made seven arrests and issued quite a few citations, it’s awesome.”

Across the street from the El Centro Sector headquarters last week, Maribel Padilla was among a handful of protesters demonstrating on the sidewalk as the sun went down. 

A small group, she said, could still send a message to Border Patrol.

“Even if it’s two, three of us, we’re gonna be making sure they see us,” Padilla said. 

Protesters said they saw Bovino pass by them, lean out of his car window and smile.

A quarter mile away, green fields of cabbage, lettuce and broccoli were mostly empty of people, save for a few fieldworkers packing up for the day. Bryan Canedo, a field supervisor, said he’s worked in the area for five years or most of Bovino’s time in the valley.

He recognized Bovino from a picture – he knew that federal agents had just killed Pretti, the protestor in Minneapolis – but he didn’t know that Bovino was in the valley for years before. 

“Just like what’s happening in Minneapolis, it’s also frightening that it could happen here,” Canedo said in Spanish. “Because it’s possible.”

But the fieldworkers keep showing up anyway. 

The valley’s peak season for winter vegetables is underway, and someone has to pick them.