‘There is no sanctuary here’: Meet the Border Patrol chief in charge of Trump’s Chicago crackdown

By Priscilla Alvarez, Michael Williams, CNN

Chicago (CNN) — The heavily armed agents carrying out President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement push in Chicago are often masked. The man leading them is not.

Nearly three decades into his career with the US Border Patrol, Gregory Bovino has become the on-the-ground face of Trump’s effort to surge federal law enforcement into blue states and cities regardless of whether local officials want them there — first in Los Angeles, now in Chicago, with other possible cities on deck.

But if he and his officers are an unwelcome presence or face interference from protesters, Bovino said he is not dissuaded.

“We’re going to carry out that mission,” Bovino said in an interview with CNN in Chicago on Tuesday. “And that’s paramount, or else we shouldn’t be here. We’re going to carry that mission out.”

He added that if “someone steps in the way, then … that may not work out well for them, and if we need to effect an arrest of a US citizen or anyone else, then we’ll do that.”

Local officials have described Bovino as leading a branch of law enforcement which deploys tactics that are frighteningly authoritarian and which has been styled into Trump’s own personal police force, used by the president as a cudgel against Democrat-led localities and the people — citizens and noncitizens alike — who live in them.

“I refuse to let Trump, Noem and Bovino continue on this march toward autocracy,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Monday. “Their plan all along has been to cause chaos, and then they can use that chaos to consolidate Trump’s power.”

Trying to tame ‘chaos’

Bovino, 55, holds the title of chief patrol agent of the El Centro sector and has been the lead on the administration’s crackdown in cities — now, 2,000 miles away from the California sector he helms. His newfound resurgence in the agency under Trump finds him in a position of power unique among his peers in Border Patrol.

His heavy-handed tactics, including immigration sweeps in parking lots and smashing car windows, have fueled consternation among some in the Trump administration while also garnering praise from senior Homeland Security officials.

The Trump administration has defended Bovino’s tactics as necessary to tamp down crime and violence in places the president has described as “war zones.” Trump has mobilized the Texas National Guard to respond to Chicago, and troops this week are training at a nearby military facility while a federal judge considers legal challenges to their placement in the city.

Trump told reporters this week he could potentially invoke the Insurrection Act to respond to Chicago and other cities, enabling him to bypass restrictions placed by courts on his ability to mobilize troops.

Asked whether he considered protests and threats against immigration enforcement personnel to be an insurrection, Bovino said “chaos” would be a better word.

“I would call it chaos in a near catastrophe, that here in Chicago, those threats against agents are manifesting in bounties to be paid out by transnational gangs here on American soil,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security this week announced the arrest of an alleged Latin Kings gang member in Chicago who offered $2,000 to anyone who could capture Bovino and $10,000 to anyone who could kill him.

Sparring with mayors

Local officials are taking their own steps to stymie the administration’s crackdown. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday signed an executive order prohibiting immigration enforcement on city property. Bovino told CNN Johnson’s order is a “pipe dream” that he would not abide by.

“There is no sanctuary here in Chicago,” Bovino said. “So, Mayor Johnson, you can keep on putting those executive orders out, but we’re going to keep on enforcing the law.”

He also blamed city officials’ heated rhetoric against immigration agents for prompting threats like the one he received.

Bovino arrived in Chicago in mid-September fresh off a summer operation in Los Angeles, where he helped orchestrate the arrests of more than 5,000 immigrants. He led contingents of federal law enforcement in shows of force in the city’s MacArthur Park.

When a National Guard Major General scrutinized some of Bovino’s tactics, the Border Patrol chief questioned his loyalty to the country.

Bovino has frequently traded barbs with local officials at the locations where he’s carrying out immigration enforcement. “Better get used to us now, because this going to be normal very soon,” he told Fox News in response to criticism from the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass.

Near Chicago, videos show Bovino leading a phalanx of camouflage-fatigued agents outside the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, barking directions to the agents and warnings to the protesters they pushed through. His agents have shattered car windows, targeted Home Depots, fired chemical irritants at protesters and members of the media and shoved to the ground people who are opposing their presence and tactics, including a militarized late-night raid on a Chicago apartment complex last week that netted 37 arrests, and involved adults and children being pulled from their homes.

“When you see a lot of Border Patrol agents or ICE agents, or CBP officers, or those allied law enforcement agencies out on the streets, and there are large numbers of them, that’s to keep our agents safe against a very real threat,” Bovino said of the raid.

His operations have been chronicled in highly stylized and sleekly edited videos posted to social media showing agents carrying tactical-like operations throughout the city.

“You think it’s a Hollywood video? That’s real life,” Bovino said. “It might be so real life that it appears to be Hollywood, but a lot of that is real time. A lot of that is what’s actually happening on the ground.”

Accused of racial profiling

Critics worry the scope of the operations led by Bovino go far beyond the “worst of the worst” the Trump administration officials say are being targeted, and they say some immigration arrests have been based on racial profiling. A recent lawsuit argued agents indiscriminately stopped individuals, prompting an order from a federal judge who said roving patrols identifying who to stop based upon apparent ethnicity alone was illegal. The Supreme Court put that order on hold.

Bovino on Tuesday denied his officers use racial profiling as a factor in deciding whether to stop or arrest someone. But he said certain characteristics of a person, including whether they look “panicked” or whether their demeanor changes when interacting with officers, could be among the “myriad of factors” that are considered.

Originally from North Carolina, Bovino joined the Border Patrol in 1996. His nearly 30-year career has taken him from Washington to New Orleans as well as foreign postings in Honduras and Africa. In 2020 he was named Chief Patrol Agent of the El Centro Sector.

In 2023, Bovino was briefly relieved of command from his position in what House Republicans described as a retaliatory measure after Bovino testified critically about conditions along the border under President Joe Biden’s administration. The Associated Press reported other factors were also at play – including his social-media presence and an online profile picture of him posing with an assault rifle.

The fact that Bovino is currently in Chicago is a sign of how much importance the administration is placing on the enforcement push in the city. But Bovino wouldn’t specify where his team would head next after Chicago.

“Everything’s based on intelligence,” he said. “We’re gonna go where that threat is.”

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