Overview
- Bovino said he will depart at the end of March after nearly 30 years with the Border Patrol, announcing his plans in an interview published Monday.
- He led multi-city operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and Minneapolis, with DHS citing more than 5,000 arrests in Los Angeles and over 3,000 in northern Illinois under Operation Midway Blitz.
- DHS has described Minneapolis’s Metro Surge as the largest interior deployment in its history, which began a rapid drawdown in February when Trump border adviser Tom Homan took command.
- The New York Post reports Bovino was removed from Minneapolis in January following the Border Patrol shooting of protester Alex Pretti, an incident that remains under investigation.
- Agency accounts describe protests and violent confrontations during the operations, and two separate federal agent-involved shootings in January tied to the surge are still under investigation.