Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino is reportedly receiving a golden parachute and a quiet retirement this week. 

But Bovino’s rise in leadership did not happen by accident. Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller made a deliberate choice to elevate him, despite – or maybe because of –clear warning signs.  

Now that Bovino is becoming the fall guy for Noem and ICE’s failures,  we need to call out that the signs for his poor leadership were there all along and Noem needs to take responsibility for the disastrous ICE assaults on our cities.  

Here are four examples that show Bovino’s leadership predictably caused harm, and why Kristi Noem should own these failures and be fired.  

1. He criticized the victims of the Minnesotakillings and did not publicly hold his own officers accountable. 

In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol officers, Bovino showed no sympathy for Pretti’s senseless death. Instead, Bovino claimed his officers were the victims.

He said “hats off” to the officer who killed Renee Good. 

Anyone who cannot find humanity in these moments is showing they were never fit to lead. 

2. He is inspired by a movie about corrupt agents. 

A recent Times of London profile opens by noting Bovino’s admiration for the Jack Nicholson film The Border, a movie centered on corrupt federal border agents. According to IMDb, the film depicts officers who abuse their authority. 

Bovino openly and repeatedly says this movie led him to want to become a Border Patrol agent. But this story is about corrupt agents and bad guys, and that’s who Bovino was cheering?  

 A warning sign, for sure.  

3. One of his formerBorder Patrol agents warned about him for years.  

Bovino frequently travels with camera crews and stages press events and social media videos that escalate tensions. A former Border Patrol agent has criticized those tactics as performative and dangerous. 

Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent, told the Chicago Sun-Times: 

“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… It’s all a show for him.” 

If his former agent is sounding alarms about him, why didn’t Noem listen? 

4. His public presence continually signals for the militarization of our communities.  

When dispatched to cold-weather cities, Bovino often wore a large green coat. Critics say it is a symbol of fascism or even a tribute to Nazism. 

But even those who won’t go that far say the coat is definitely a tribute to militarization, a concerning symbol for someone who works inside American cities as law enforcement.  

Once again, the abuses of power tied to Bovino did not happen in a vacuum. Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller chose him—and now they must answer that choice. Join us in our demands to Fire Kristi Noem.  

To stay up to date on Common Cause’s effort to reveal corruption and hold elected officials accountable, follow us on  X [Twitter], Instagram, Trapos, Facebook, y TikTok.