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Bovino The Mastermind

Published by digby on January 19, 2026

This striking guy in the Nazi coat—Gregory (Greg) Bovino—is a high-ranking U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, holding a position created specifically for him as “Special Operations Commander.”

I don’t know how many of you have listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast series “Burn Order” about the Japanese internment but it’s really excellent. As with all of her work in that medium she exposes the fact that America has done all this stuff in the past, which isn’t exactly reassuring because it means that we really don’t progress all that much. On the other hand we did manage to survive so maybe we will this time too.

Anyway, in this one she reveals that the masterminds of the internment policy were a west coast military general and his aid who, in the post Pearl Harbor panic, managed to push through the policy over the objections of many in the administration and evidence that there were no Japanese American spies working against the US. (There were white American spies doing that for both Japan and Germany but whatevs.) It’s a great podcast, and I highly recommend it.

Today I read this in the NY Times about Gregory Bovino (that little Il Ducette of the border patrol up top) who is leading the charge in Minneapolis and elsewhere and was reminded once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

Before the Border Patrol embarked on its high-profile raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and Minneapolis, it tried out its tactics a year ago in Kern County, in California’s agricultural heartland.

A lawsuit filed against the federal government over its operations in Bakersfield and other parts of Kern County claimed that in some instances, Border Patrol agents had not identified themselves or presented warrants. In others, people were grabbed with force, and their requests to call a lawyer were denied. And in one case, the lawsuit said, agents stopped a U.S. citizen driving a truck, slashed the tires, blocked the truck with another vehicle, arrested the driver and then released him a few hours later.

The raids last January, in the last days of the Biden administration, initially drew little attention outside the farm country of California’s Central Valley. At the time, the eyes of the world were focused on the two vast wildfires raging in Los Angeles County.

But the Border Patrol’s actions in Kern County, which it called Operation Return to Sender, can be seen as a blueprint for the broader immigration crackdown that was to come. Similar tactics have become part of the agency’s standard playbook in other places, including Minnesota, where federal immigration agents are making hundreds of arrests amid sustained protests from local leaders and residents.

The man who led the Kern County raids, Gregory Bovino, became a star among opponents of illegal immigration. When the Trump administration began an immigration crackdown in Los Angeles in June, Mr. Bovino was tapped to lead operations there, and he was later asked to lead crackdowns in other cities.

“The Kern County operation was a test run, or a pilot project, on Bovino’s part,” Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “We called it his audition for the Trump administration, and unfortunately, it seems to have worked. It really propelled him into the national spotlight, and since then, he’s only gained greater prominence as he’s been leading these operations around the country.”

The Border Patrol promoted the Kern County raids as a success, saying that it had arrested 78 undocumented immigrants during the three-day operation, including some with criminal histories.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit and won in court the judge finding that the CBP had violated the constitution, the law and its own policies. It was appealed and sits today in the glacially slow justice system while the country is being traumatized by Bovino’s violent, illegal strategy, which continues apace.

These racist hysterics take on a life of their own under the right circumstances. I will say that at least in WWII, we had been attacked and both Germany and Japan had declared war on the U.S. Not that it’s any excuse but there at least was an actual crisis on which they built their racist policy. This is just a vanity project for some sociopaths who are living in another dimension. There is no threat that requires every immigrant in America to be rousted out of their homes and workplaces and sent to camps and deported. It’s not necessary, never has been.

This crisis is completely fabricated. And yet it seems there is no way to stop it.

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