CALEXICO, Calif. — Before he strutted through Chicago as the lone unmasked face of the anti-immigrant “blitz” ordered by the Trump administration, Greg Bovino was the U.S. Border Patrol’s low-profile chief responsible for a dusty, rocky and remote 70-mile stretch dividing California and Mexi co.Even then, he sought attention. Bovino once invited reporters to watch him breaststroke across a concrete irrigation canal in Southern California's Imperial Valley, warning migrants that the currents were strong.Bovino has boasted about a second wall he built in this border town. Tall slats of President Donald Trump’s rusting border fence already separated Calexico from bustling Mexicali. But Bovino bragged about his parallel, shorter barrier.With the bravado now familiar to many in Chicago, Bovino said in a cable news interview that his fence would send a message to the “bad guys on the south side” who traffic drugs. The fence was supposed to buttress the country’s defenses for an entire mile.Actually, it's just 0.15 miles long.Now, Bovino is roaming far from his territory along the nation's southwest frontier. He calls himself the Border Patrol’s “commander at large,” preens for the TV cameras and seems content to incite people on the streets, many who now instantly recognize him, to curse him in English and Spanish. U.S. Border Patrol Commander at Large Gregory Bovino speaks to protesters through the gate outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 27 in Broadview.Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times Though he has left Chicago for now, Bovino, 55, has vowed to come back. Sources say a renewed deportation push in Illinois in 2026 could involve a bigger detachment of Border Patrol agents than during the initial frenzied months of “Operation Midway Blitz.”Bovino has said he was inspired to join the Border Patrol when he saw a movie called “The Border” that came out when he was just 11. Produced by a distant cousin of his mom, it starred Jack Nicholson and Harvey Keitel as agents.But the young Bovino was crestfallen that the movie portrayed the agents as bad guys and said he was moved to join the Border Patrol in 1996 to show he was the opposite — a good border cop.“Making the border secure is my personal responsibility,” Bovino said on a podcast in 2021.His push this fall into Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and New Orleans to scoop up those who lack legal status has made Bovino a breakout star in a Trump administration heavy with reality TV and political talk-show veterans.But some are revolted by his mix of street-level swagger, combative social media posts and seeming self-importance.Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol senior agent, calls Bovino “the Liberace of the Border Patrol" for his flamboyant behavior and the camera crews that trail him on raids, producing and distributing videos of aggressive immigration busts.Budd is a longtime, fierce critic of what she describes as an institutional culture of rampant sexism, racism and corruption in the Border Patrol in Southern California, where she worked, and throughout the agency.Budd said Bovino echoes right-wing views that are common among Border Patrol agents.“He's just a little Napoleon who wants you to think that he is a hero and the most moral and capable guy in the world, and everything around you is dangerous," she said in an interview. "But he's the one who's going to save you. It's all a show for him.”To get a better sense of how Bovino came to the high-profile role he now occupies, Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ reporters combed through his testimony before Congress, other public statements and interviews and court filings and traveled to rural North Carolina, where they met hometown friends and foes, and the Imperial Valley in Southern California, where Bovino auditioned for his current starring role.One person who wouldn't talk, though, was Bovino himself. He didn’t reply to requests for comment.But repeatedly over the years, Bovino has said that his main concern is to protect what he calls "Ma and Pa America" from bad people and bad things that cross the border often intoning gravely: "What happens at the border never stays at the border."The chain migration of the BovinosWith a pronounced drawl — and dreams of one day retiring to an apple orchard — Bovino leans hard on his North Carolina pride. That pride is rooted in his mother’s side of the family. Betty Hartley was born into a sprawling family with deep roots in the state’s “High Country” tracing back many generations, records show, and on the mountain in northwestern North Carolina where Bovino grew up.The daughter of a town council member, she became a founding member of the charitable Women’s Club and secretary of the chamber of commerce in the historic vacation town Blowing Rock. The landmark rock formation overlooks the Johns River Gorge in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The gorge is nestled in the sprawling Blue Ridge Mountains. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 1 of 7 The landmark rock formation overlooks the Johns River Gorge in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The gorge is nestled in the sprawling Blue Ridge Mountains. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 2 of 7 A vista of the Johns River Gorge in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The gorge is nestled in the sprawling Blue Ridge Mountains. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 3 of 7 A walkway leads to a stunning vista of the Johns River Gorge in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The gorge is nestled in the sprawling Blue Ridge Mountains. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 4 of 7 Church of the Epiphany is the first Catholic church built in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. Gregory Bovino’s parents, Elizabeth Irene Hartley and Michael J. Bovino, were married at the church in November 1966. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 5 of 7 Crosses top the Church of the Epiphany Catholic Church in Blowing Rock, N.C.,Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. Gregory Bovino’s parents, Elizabeth Irene Hartley and Michael J. Bovino, were married at the church in November 1966. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 6 of 7 Church of the Epiphany is the first Catholic church built in Blowing Rock, N.C., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. Gregory Bovino’s parents, Elizabeth Irene Hartley and Michael J. Bovino, were married at the church in November 1966. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 7 of 7 But Bovino’s full story is less ma-and-pa and more nonna-and-nonno. The ancestry of Bovino’s father is Italian with rural, working-class origins not much different from the Mexicans and other newcomers who’ve been targeted lately by federal deportation efforts.The American story of the Bovinos begins with a miner named Michele, who emigrated in 1909 from Calabria in southern Italy to Pennsylvania's coal country, later becoming Michael, according to public records. His wife Luigia and their children stayed behind in their rural, mountainous village of Aprigliano in a region lacking opportunity and plagued by organized crime. At the time of Michele Bovino’s arrival, there were no legal restrictions on Italians who dreamed of crossing the Atlantic.That changed in May 1924. U.S. politicians, expressing alarm at the high percentage of foreign-born residents and driven by bigoted beliefs in eugenics, decided to stifle huge waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Congress passed a law that created strict quotas, cutting the number of arrivals allowed from countries like Italy, whose immigrants were derided as being less intelligent and more prone to crime than Protestant western and northern Europeans.Also in May 1924, the Border Patrol was created.Days later, Michele Bovino, 43, filed documents indicating his interest in becoming an American.Three years later, records show, the chain migration of the Bovinos took place.Here’s how the Bovinos managed to get around the new quotas that limited how many Italians and others deemed to be “undesirables” could end up in the United States.After Michele was naturalized in 1927, he was reunited with his wife and four children in a Pennsylvania coal-company town after their arrival on the steamship the S.S. Giuseppe Verdi, records show.Then, the kids, including Vincenzo, 12 — Gregory Bovino's future grandfather — automatically benefited from a “derivative citizenship” law for minors. Luigia would become a naturalized citizen.Nearly a century later, it’s astonishing to see “a person whose grandfather was an immigrant engaging in such abhorrent and violent treatment of contemporary migrants,” Joseph Sciorra — the director of academic programs at the Calandra Italian American Institute at the City University of New York — said of Bovino.Trump’s top aides have held up the 1924 immigration law as justification for restricting the flow of new migrants.“You can’t help but think,” Sciorra said, “what’s going on in a person’s conscience with that kind of background and that kind of behavior.” In 1981, Greg Bovino’s father, Michael Bovino, spoke to the Charlotte Observer from prison, where he was serving time for killing a 26-year-old woman in a drunk-driving crash.”The Charlotte Observer. A drunken crash in Blowing RockAs a Border Patrol boss, Bovino has repeatedly cited the threat of undocumented immigrants who’ve killed U.S. citizens while driving drunk. The Trump administration said Midway Blitz was launched in Chicago in honor of one of them, a 20-year-old DUI victim.In 1981, Bovino’s father, Mike Bovino, killed a young woman after drunkenly crashing his truck head-on into her car in the hilly little resort town of Blowing Rock, N.C., near the Bovinos’ home.Newspaper accounts described the victims’ car as “bowled over by the impact.” There were no skid marks. Bovino was uninjured.Janie Mae Mitchell, 26, was killed, and her husband, Larry Dean Mitchell, 29, seriously injured in the wreck June 6, 1981. The couple, who lived an hour down the mountain, had gone out in search of donuts. Janie Mae was a seamstress who’d just sewn the gowns for her younger sister’s wedding the month before.Her husband buried her near their home under a heart-shaped headstone engraved: “To my loving wife.” Janie Mae Mitchell’s tombstone in the Taylorsville City Cemetery in Taylorsville, N.C. Mitchell was killed by Gregory Bovino’s father, Michael Bovino, in a drunken driving accident in 1981.Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times He sued Mike Bovino and the popular bar he owned in town, the Library Club, adding to Bovino’s legal troubles.Back in the 1970s, Blowing Rock was a rare place to buy beer and wine in the region as the closest places, including the college town of Boone, were dry. At one point, the town’s mayor said, there were 21 bars.Mike Bovino minimized his punishment by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “death by motor vehicle,” the Watauga County case file shows.The judge’s order spelled out that Bovino needed to be sent to state prison “for treatment of his alcoholism.” He spent four months locked up.In an interview from prison with The Charlotte Observer, Mike Bovino, then 37, admitted he was drunk that night.“I had two, maybe three six-packs of beer. I don’t remember how many,” he said. “I turned onto the highway and just drove down the wrong side. I saw the lights from another car, but I thought they were in the other lane. Then, it was over so fast.”Alcohol had long caused him grief. He’d had a DUI seven years earlier, and he and his wife argued about drinking, he said, with Betty Bovino urging him “to quit the sauce” the evening of the crash.“So I proceeded to get inebriated,” Mike Bovino told the reporter.But he said he wouldn't do that again once he got out of prison: “I’ve got a dead woman on my hands… Getting dead drunk just isn’t worth it.”The lawsuit forced the sale of Bovino’s bar and property it sat on. Betty Bovino filed for divorce. The settlement gave her custody of the three kids.By then, Mike Bovino was living in New Mexico.As the couple divided their assets, Mike Bovino asked the judge for only these things from the family home: the pool table, tools, lawnmower, a "beer topper," three suitcases, a color TV, three baby photos, books, a tennis racket, an ice-cream freezer, a jukebox with records and a mantle clock.His son Greg was 14 then.Hunting for snakesWhen Greg Bovino entered Watauga High School, he found a place on the wrestling team. He was hardly the biggest guy or the best wrestler, his old coach says. But Bovino listened, persevered and respected his teammates. Senior year, they elected him “most improved” despite an unusually terrible season, said their coach, Lee Stroupe, 76.Stroupe remembers Bovino as a “solid-rock student-athlete” at the high school in Boone.“Greg was not bashful,” Stroupe said in an interview at a restaurant in Boone. “He had no problems asking the coach questions. And, you know, he liked to tell stories, funny stories.”Still, Stroupe was surprised to learn about Bovino’s career when they bumped into each other a few years ago.“I asked myself, ‘How? You?’ ” he said. “That was a real surprise. I just didn't picture Greg being in law enforcement. He was always very pleasant, and I didn't see him as that. That, to me, didn't seem to fit his personality.” Gregory Bovino smiles in his senior photo alongside his classmates in the 1988 Watauga High School yearbook, which lies open on a table at the school in Boone, N.C. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 1 of 9 A student walks into Watauga High School in Boone, N.C., Wednesday, Nov, 19. 2025. Gregory Bovino graduated from Watagua High in 1988. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 2 of 9 The 1988 Watauga High School yearbook shows senior Gregory Bovino (front row, far right) with his wrestling teammates. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 3 of 9 Lee Stroupe sits in the dining room at Bella’s Italian Restaurant in Boone, N.C., Wednesday, Nov, 19. 2025. Stroup was Gregory Bovino’s Watauga High School wrestling coach in the 1980s. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 4 of 9 The 1988 Watauga High year book lies on a table at the school in Boone, N.C., Wednesday, Nov, 19. 2025. Gregory Bovino’s family shared a Bible scripture to commemorate his graduation. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 5 of 9 Jason Perry sits with his cat, Grace, outside their trailer home in Boone, N.C., Wednesday, Nov, 19. 2025. Perry wrestled with Gregory Bovino when they attended Watauga High School in the 1980s. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 6 of 9 Jason Perry’s trailer home sits on a hill in Boone, N.C., Wednesday, Nov, 19. 2025. Perry wrestled with Gregory Bovino when they attended Watauga High School in the 1980s. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 7 of 9 Pedestrians wait a a crosswalk in downtown Boone, N.C., Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 8 of 9 La Monarca Tienda Mexicana sits shuttered next to a Christmas tree farm in downtown Boone, N.C., Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times. | Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times 9 of 9 Bovino's wrestling teammate Jason Perry also was surprised when he realized his onetime pal — “very polite and managed to carry himself well” — was now in the news.“I don’t think Greg would not do his job, and, like, if they’re asking to do something that's not fair to the minorities, I'm sure he's hating it,” Perry says.“This is kind of a Bible belt community, so I know Greg was exposed to compassion and love for his fellow man. But it's dangerous to speculate what a man is thinking. I hope whatever happens, I hope it works out good for him and his family and the people that are being mistreated.” Jason Perry sitting in the kitchen of his trailer home in Boone, N.C., on Nov. 19. Perry wrestled with Gregory Bovino when they attended Watauga High School in the 1980s. “If they’re asking to do something that’s not fair to the minorities, I’m sure he’s hating it,” Perry says.Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times Bovino's old coach recalls one more detail.“Now, this is odd," Stroupe said. "He liked snakes. He knew exactly where to find a snake.“ ‘Greg,’ I said, ‘We don't have many poisonous snakes up here in the mountains.' He says, ‘Well, I know where there are poisonous snakes.’ And I said, ‘Greg, tell me where.’ And he said, ‘I know. I can tell you exactly where to look.’ ”The teenage Bovino advised his coach to look in old tin roofs and under tin plates on the ground — “places where they like to take cover.”Bovino’s rise in the Border PatrolAfter getting a bachelor’s degree in natural resource conservation at Western Carolina University and a master’s in public administration from Appalachian State University, Bovino left the job he had with the Boone Police Department for the Border Patrol.He became part of graduating Class 325, along with Jason Owens, who in 2023 would become head of the Border Patrol. Owens graduated at the top of their academy class and did better in Spanish than Bovino, but Bovino said in a podcast they recorded together that he was better than Owens in physical education and marksmanship.After graduating, they got shipped across the country to the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, Calif., about a two-hour drive from San Diego.Bovino told Owens on the podcast they recorded 25 years later that he was impressed when the sector chief showed up in the field alongside the agents. Bovino said it showed him the need to “get into the fight.”Bovino rose in the ranks, taking increasingly big assignments along the southern border; in Washington, where he got another master's, at the National War College; and in New Orleans.In 2020, Bovino returned to El Centro as chief of the Border Patrol sector there, one of nine in the country. He recently said he answers directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, though, as sector chief, he’d been several rungs down in the hierarchy. U.S. Border Patrol Commander at Large Gregory Bovino leads the Oct. 31 arrest of a man working outside a home on the 7400 block of North Oconto Avenue in Edison Park.Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times In congressional testimony a couple of years ago, Bovino said he oversaw about 1,100 employees in El Centro, including about 900 agents.He said much had changed there since his first time in the area in the 1990s, with the border being flooded by vastly more new arrivals than earlier in his career.And social media had emerged. That saw Bovino get himself in trouble. He testified that he’d been forced by his supervisor to take down a tweet “because it was too political, and there were some folks at the higher levels that had had some problem with that.”Bovino said he didn't think the post in June 2023 — about someone killed by an undocumented drunken driver — was political.He said there were at least three other times, though, when he also had been upbraided over his social media activity.“But before I continue to answer this, I would like to say that this is a very sensitive topic, and I do have a chain of command, and I don't like the threat of a reprisal,” he testified. “And I want that in the Congressional Record here right now.“So, yes, there were other posts that I was forced to take down. I think there was one with two Yemenis, terrorists. I was ordered to take that down. I was ordered to remove my picture from social media.”Soon after his testimony, two Republican U.S. House members — who had convened the hearings about then-President Joe Biden’s handling of the border — said they were concerned that Bovino was being taken from El Centro and demoted to a “vague” new role at the Border Patrol’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.A few weeks later, the two congressmen announced his “rightful reinstatement” to El Centro.‘When life gives us ICE’Bovino refers to El Centro as “The Premier Sector,” boasting that the “consequences” meted out to unauthorized crossers there translate into fewer apprehensions in that 70-mile segment of the international border.Some of his critics in Southern California told WBEZ and the Sun-Times that agents in the Imperial Valley under Bovino and before his tenure have acted mercilessly at times toward even the most docile migrants.The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have accused a Border Patrol agent in the El Centro sector on Bovino’s watch of assaulting a diminutive Salvadoran migrant, forcing her separation from her 10-year-old daughter for five months in 2022.While in detention, the woman was charged with assaulting the agent — though the charges later were dropped, just as many of the government’s cases were against protesters in Chicago who were accused of aggression toward federal officers.“I think it was a prosecution that sought to silence her, stop her from speaking out about the assault that she experienced,” said Monika Langarica, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’ve seen it here at the border for a very long time, and now obviously, you know, Bovino has taken that show on the road.” Monika Langarica, senior staff attorney at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, on Dec. 3 in Lemon Grove, California.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times The Imperial Valley surrounding El Centro lies across the mountains from San Diego. Approaching from the west, the Yuha Desert gives way to lush, green farmland thanks to irrigation ditches like the All-American Canal, where Bovino once took a dip for the TV cameras. Ninety percent of the winter vegetables consumed in this country come from the Imperial Valley. The harvesting is back-breaking.In a small town called Heber, Latino workers jump out from the sliding doors of minivans in front of a general store at dusk, shopping for Bud Light at the end of long shifts in the fields.Some take out phones to photograph a new mural across the street. It’s a play on the American catchphrase about making lemonade out of lemons.“Cuando la vida nos da ICE, hacemos raspados,” it reads.It means: “When life gives us ICE, we make shaved ice,” a Mexican favorite. Farm workers pick produce in fields on Dec. 6 outside El Centro, a neighboring city of Calexico in California’s Imperial Valley.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times At 2 a.m. on a weekday, hundreds of fieldhands lined up around the block in Calexico for the state government’s annual “Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast,” which offered tamales before workers headed into the fields of cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce.Sandra Soto, 52, wore a mask like many farmhands do, to protect their faces from the blazing sun while they harvest crops. Soto has worked in the fields — where she’s paid $16.50 an hour — for 35 years. “Nobody does this work except Mexicans,” she said.After dancing to some Latin music at the breakfast, Soto boarded a bus before dawn to a field near Bovino’s home.Within a block of the Border Patrol chief’s house, four vehicles with agents sat parked. When journalists from WBEZ and the Sun-Times approached the house, his wife declined to comment. Agents emerged from the vehicles and demanded identification.A spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Centro said agents have been guarding Bovino’s house for months, since he led a deportation operation in June in Los Angeles, generating furious protests — and threats against him.Still, some people in the heavily Hispanic Imperial Valley say they like Bovino.Joseph Guilin, 32, owns a postal store in downtown Calexico, where most of his clientele are aspiring U.S. citizens who need a mailing address for their government paperwork. Guilin says he has little sympathy for those who cross the border without getting permission, seeing them as a financial drain.And he said young people in the valley like him are turning increasingly Republican, noting Trump’s increased vote totals in 2024 and the successful recall effort against Calexico’s progressive, transgender former mayor.“There’s a bunch of people that voted for deportations” in the Imperial Valley, Guilin said. Farm workers line up to receive food and items at the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California in Calexico, California. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 1 of 13 Sandra Soto, a farm worker in Imperial, stands for a photo at the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California at 301 Heber Ave in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 2 of 13 Farm workers line up to receive food and items at the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California at 301 Heber Ave in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 3 of 13 Farm workers line up to receive food and items at the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California at 301 Heber Ave in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 4 of 13 Farm workers line up to receive food and items at the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California at 301 Heber Ave in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 5 of 13 A farm worker walks back to the city center after the 46th Annual Farmworkers Appreciation Breakfast at Calexico One-Stop America’s Job Center of California at 301 Heber Ave in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Timesin Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 6 of 13 An old water tank and Calexico West Land Port of Entry that is undergoing renovations at 342 E 1st St in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 7 of 13 The United State Border Inspection Station at 200 E 1st St in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 8 of 13 Joseph E. Guilin helps a customer with a package at the post office that he manages at Barron’s Postal Service at 404 E 2nd Street in Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 9 of 13 Shoppers walk in front of storefronts at 219 E 1st Stin Calexico, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 10 of 13 Farm workers work the fields outside of El Centro, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 11 of 13 The mountainous terrain on the outskirts of the Imperial valley in southern California, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 12 of 13 Farm workers collect produce in one of the agricultural fields outside of El Centro, California, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 13 of 13 ‘The Green Machine’Bovino refers to his fellow Border Patrol agents as a family, calling it the “Green Machine” for its uniforms and praising the agency as the country’s biggest and best law enforcement arm.“The Border Patrol has been my life’s work, and I’ll say that with pride,” Bovino said in his 2021 podcast episode with Owens. They ended up reciting the Border Patrol slogan, “Honor first.”But in private some male Border Patrol employees are just as likely to twist that slogan to instead say “on her first,” said Budd, the former agent.Budd said she and other women in the Border Patrol were raped as a rite of passage and faced a backlash if they complained. She pointed to the sexual misconduct cases that have been filed against agents over the years.Budd wrote a book three year ago titled “Against the Wall: My Journey from Border Patrol Agent to Immigrant Rights Activist.”“The Border Patrol is like a cult, and we say we bleed green, and we always protect each other,” she said at her home in Southern California. “The majority of agents are people I characterize with very low self-esteem.” Jenn Budd, author and former Border Patrol officer, at her home in Southern California. “He’s just going around with his bros, just capturing migrants and people of color and harassing people,” she says of Gregory Bovino.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times Budd said the agency has low standards for accepting new recruits, does not vet hires thoroughly enough and routinely engages in excessive force, referring to detained migrants as “tonks” — the sound made when officers bash heads with flashlights.“The pattern and practice down here is to make false accusations against the people you just beat up,” she said.Budd said she quit after unearthing wrongdoing and being threatened to keep quiet. So she took delight at the rulings of federal judges in Chicago who sought to curtail Bovino. Last month, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis found that Bovino wasn’t hit in the head with a rock before he deployed tear gas despite the Department of Homeland Security's assertions that he was in justifying his use of force. The judge said Bovino admitted he lied.“He laughs when they call him out on the stuff, and it's just a bro thing," Budd says. "He's just going around with his bros, just capturing migrants and people of color and harassing people.“They will lie constantly, like you saw in the Chicago courts. They will not think twice about doing it, and nobody will hold them accountable.”Bovino’s wilderness photo opAbout 30 miles east of El Centro, 81-year-old widow Edie Harmon lives in what she calls the first house north of the border, frequently bumping into Border Patrol agents on long walks in the Yuha Desert, sometimes strolling on the concrete road alongside the 5-year-old border fence.Agents in El Centro had warned journalists of “bandits” in that area, but Harmon scoffs at the notion there’s danger lurking. She walks around the desert wearing the multicolored shoelaces she finds near the border. Arresting agents make migrants leave the laces, she said, so they can’t use them to hang themselves while in custody.The fence, 30 feet tall, ends where a mountain rises in the Jacumba Wilderness. Harmon points out where the government has strung rolls of concertina wire along a ridge. Edie Harmon looks out onto the desert landscape near the border of U.S. and Mexico on Dec. 4 near Ocotillo, California. Harmon, who’s hiked with Gregory Bovino, says, “What he’s asking people to do in L.A. and Chicago, it’s heartbreaking.”Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times Two times since Bovino became El Centro sector chief, Harmon said, the government has taken down the wire after she complained to Bovino and to officials in Washington.“Well, somebody at Border Patrol ordered it from the El Centro sector, and he was the chief," she said. "The buck stops at the top."Lately, though, the wire again can be seen snaking up the mountain. Harmon told Border Patrol officials including Bovino that the razor wire threatens federally protected bighorn sheep that used to drift back and forth across the border.Bovino once wrote a thesis on what he called the threat of illegal immigration to the same animals in the Southwest, saying they were targeted by foreign poachers.Harmon said Bovino’s concertina wire is a bigger problem for the sheep.A few years ago, after Harmon complained about off-road Border Patrol vehicles disturbing the desert environment, Bovino took up her offer to go for a hike in the wilderness. He wrote her a handwritten thank-you letter saying the Border Patrol also cares about the environment. Edie Harmon, from Ocotillo, California, and then-El Centro Sector Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino walk in the Jacumba Wilderness in Southern California on March 19, 2021.Provided She said Bovino tried to win her over by offering to install a “guzzler” — a watering tank for the sheep — and to dedicate it in the name of her dead husband. She said she declined because no biologists recommended that. Before Bovino left their hike, he asked to take a photo with Harmon, each standing on opposite sides of a cactus.It’s this smiling, gracious version of Bovino the former Peace Corps member is trying to square with the man who’s the star of Trump’s aggressive deportation mission.“What he's asking people to do in L.A. and Chicago, it's heartbreaking," Harmon said. “That’s not like any of my encounters with Border Patrol agents. They’ve treated me politely and kindly."All the people that are acting like bullies, they all know better. That's not the way they were raised by their grandmothers and mothers. That's not the way they would want their kids to behave or treat other people.” The border extending into the distance of United States and Mexico near Ocotillo, California. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 1 of 14 Clothing items left behind on the Mexican side of the border with the U.S. near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 2 of 14 Large spools of concertina wire for extension of the wall at the border of the United States and Mexico near Ocotillo, California. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 3 of 14 The border wall between the U.S. and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 4 of 14 Concertina wire deployed as a deterrent at the U.S. border with Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 5 of 14 A statue of a saint lays against the rocks on the Mexican side of the border with the U.S. near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 6 of 14 A secondary wall (right) built by Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino at the border of US and Mexico near the 500 block of East 1st Street in Calexico, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 7 of 14 A warning sign for migrants at the border of US and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 8 of 14 Edie Harmon walks along side the border of US and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 9 of 14 A lone sandal near the border of US and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 10 of 14 The a secondary smaller wall in front of the border wall at the border of U.S. and Mexico near the 500 block of East 1st Street in Calexico, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 11 of 14 A border patrol vehicle is parked between the border wall and a smaller secondary wall built by Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino at the border of US and Mexico near the 500 block of East 1st Street in Calexico, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 12 of 14 Edie Harmon walks along side the border of US and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 13 of 14 A border patrol vehicle can be seen in distance at the border of US and Mexico near Ocotillo, California, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times 14 of 14 Coming home to North CarolinaIn Bovino’s hometown, 2,200 miles across the country, Watauga County residents were stunned to find a Border Patrol squad conducting operations there last month. The area is at least five hours from the Atlantic coast.The county is sparsely populated, with the same number of residents as a single Chicago ward.And key construction and Christmas-tree growing industries depend on immigrant workers brought in on seasonal visas.The commander had shifted his deportation operation from Chicago to Charlotte, North Carolina, on Nov. 15. Before Thanksgiving, dozens of federal agents parked behind a popular Blowing Rock shopping center on the road to Boone to suit up and fan out.Blowing Rock’s mayor, Charlie Sellers, said he had no warning.“I don't really follow the ICE thing or the Border Patrol, but I am always, always in favor of people being treated fairly no matter who you are,” said Sellers, 66, whose family helped turn the town into a tourist haven with North Carolina’s first tourist attraction, the Blowing Rock overlook.Sellers said he doesn’t know Bovino, but “I've learned more about him in the last few weeks, a month or two, than I ever knew."What followed the sightings was a playbook familiar to Chicago:Taco stands and other Latino-owned businesses shutting their doors.Students pulling together a rally on Appalachian State’s campus in Boone.People driving around trying to document the officers’ vehicles. Uber driver Diego Castro, 33, who came to the United States on a tourist visa from Venezuela and applied for asylum in 2017, is detained by federal immigration enforcement agents at the 1100 block of North Wood Avenue in West Town, Friday, Oct. 24, 2025.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times One of the drivers, Mary Ballard, called Bovino’s local origins “disconcerting, a bit disheartening.” A protester who gave her name only as “Hugger” said: “It’s absolutely shameful. He’s from the mountains.“I noticed that a lot of our construction sites have shut down because there's so many Latino people [who] work there, and none of the construction is getting done. It's hurting us economically, you know, especially with the Christmas trees.”The Watauga County Immigrant Justice Coalition sought advice from small Chicago nonprofits as it has tried to track arrests and support immigrants.“We didn't feel like [Watauga County] would be as good of a target for them for their viral success or their numbers quota,” said Grace Ruiz, one of its leaders. “But the thing that also triggered us was that Bovino is from this area. . . I mean, honestly, he's a jerk." Appalachian State University students protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in western North Carolina. They’re standing outside the Jones House Community Center in Boone, N.C., on Nov. 20. Gregory Bovino attended Appalachian State in the 1990s.Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times Related Feds march into Downtown Chicago; top border agent says people are arrested based partly on ‘how they look’ Transcript: Gregory Bovino says arrestees in Downtown Chicago chosen based partly on ‘how they look’ From California to Chicago, a Border Patrol boss sparks accusations of race-based arrests ...read more read less