Gregory Bovino, the most notorious face of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, is set to retire, weeks after the president sent him packing following the death of two American citizens.
Bovino, 55, the Border Patrol chief patrol agent and self-styled “commander-at-large” who became one of the most polarizing figures of the administration’s hardline deportation push, broke the news to Breitbart, announcing he would leave the agency at the end of March after a career of nearly 30 years.
The Daily Beast has followed Bovino relentlessly since he first burst onto the national scene, tracking him across courtrooms, city streets, and Las Vegas bars.
The role had been “the greatest honor of my entire life,” Bovino told Breitbart, adding that watching his agents toil in perilous conditions had left him humbled. That sentiment will ring hollow to those who witnessed the scorched trail he left behind.
Behind the front-line mayhem, Bovino was also a central figure in a bitter internal war being fought at the top of DHS on behalf of Homeland Security Secretary Krist Noem, 54, and her chief aide and rumored lover Corey Lewandowski, 52.
With Noem and Lewandowski now gone, one senior administration source told the Daily Beast of Bovino’s retirement: “I’m not surprised at all.”
Bovino first made his name in the summer of 2025, fronting a sweeping operation in Los Angeles that produced more than 5,000 arrests, including a stunt his agency branded “Operation Trojan Horse,” in which agents hid inside a rented Penske truck to conduct immigration checks at an informal day labor site. He then took his road show to Chicago, where “Operation Midway Blitz” racked up more than 3,000 arrests across northern Illinois.
Chicago also handed him a string of stinging courtroom defeats. Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis slapped Bovino with a humiliating requirement to appear before her at 6 p.m. every weekday to account for his agents’ conduct, after they deployed chemical irritants near families and children in Halloween costumes at an Old Irving Park neighborhood parade. Ellis later ruled that Bovino had fabricated a “rock attack” narrative and repeated it under oath to justify his use of tear gas.
Away from the courts, he became an unlikely cultural target. A DHS promotional video of Bovino in a long black trench coat and spiked hair drew Nazi comparisons, including from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 58, and a torrent of online mockery.
World-famous sculptor Anish Kapoor used the Beast to publicly warn Bovino to stay away from his “Cloud Gate”—better known as Chicago’s Bean.
The Border Patrol commander had a brief sojourn to his home state of North Carolina on a Thanksgiving operation that raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. Then, on Christmas Day, when others were celebrating, Bovino fired off dozens of posts in a 12-hour X marathon, goading politicians and sniping at critics.
It emerged in January that Noem and Lewandowski had been using Bovino to wage what sources described to the Washington Examiner as an “evil” campaign to force out the career head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Commissioner Rodney Scott.
To cement their grip, they cut Scott out entirely, giving Bovino a back channel straight to Noem and Lewandowski and instructing him to bypass the CBP chief as he rolled out his “turn and burn” blitz model across American cities.
The arrangement generated a remarkable paper trail. When acting ICE Director Todd Lyons pushed back during “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, arguing Bovino should confine his sweeps to individuals with criminal records or prior removal orders, Bovino was having none of it. In an email obtained by NBC News, Bovino told Lyons plainly: “Mr. Lyons said he was in charge, and I corrected him saying I report to Corey Lewandowski.” Ten days later, the operation abandoned its targeted focus entirely.
In December 2025, Lewandowski moved to further entrench the Noem camp’s grip on the agency, appointing attorney Joseph Mazzara, a man with no prior law enforcement experience, as CBP deputy commissioner in what DHS insiders told the Beast was a deliberate attempt to run Scott’s own agency over his head.
As one DHS source told the Beast, “he was Corey’s henchman and sought to fire anyone not loyal to Noem, Corey and Trump.” Scott fought back, and the battle raged on through Minneapolis, the scene of Bovino’s final chapter, where “Operation Metro Surge” ended in catastrophe.
In early January, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, 37, an unarmed mother. On Jan. 24, Border Patrol agents threw VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, also 37, to the pavement while he was shielding a female protester, then shot him. Both incidents, which caused worldwide outrage, remain under investigation.
Bovino then torched what remained of his standing by going on television to echo Noem’s claim that Pretti was a would-be “terrorist,” asserting without providing evidence that the nurse had been plotting to massacre officers. As the Beast reported, that performance was the final straw inside the West Wing.
On Jan. 27, the White House sent in Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to take over in Minneapolis and announced a rapid drawdown, shipping Bovino back to his old El Centro Sector in California and revoking his access to his official government X account.
Three days later, the Beast found him at Bottled Blonde, a bar on the Las Vegas Strip, drinking red wine with a group of younger men, before staff escorted him out. The venue told the Beast it had asked him to leave “to maintain a safe and orderly environment for all patrons.”
The internal DHS war has ended, for now at least, with Bovino, Noem, and Lewandowski all casualties. On March 5, Trump fired Noem after two days of bruising congressional hearings, during which senators grilled her over the Minneapolis deaths, hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable DHS contracts, and the full scope of her and Lewandowski’s grip on the agency. Lewandowski left the department with her.
DHS is now run on an acting basis by Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar while the Senate processes the nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, 48, as the new secretary.
Raised in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, Bovino joined the Border Patrol in 1996 at the El Centro Sector in California, served on international assignments in Egypt, Africa, and Honduras, and is a former member of BORTAC, the agency’s elite tactical unit. He ends his career at the same sector where he began it.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversee Border Patrol, for comment.
