In what’s quickly become the most humiliating move of the Trump administration’s hard‑line immigration crackdown, order Patrol “commander at large” Gregory Bovino has been demoted and effectively ousted from the Minneapolis operation after the fiasco surrounding the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents under his command.
Sources familiar with the situation Bovino will be sent back to his old post in El Centro, California, where he’s expected to retire soon — a dramatic end to his high‑profile role in aggressive enforcement, according to The Atlantic.
Bovino’s removal is being interpreted inside Washington as an unmistakable sign that the White House is backing off its most belligerent tactics after back‑to‑back deaths in Minneapolis sparked national outrage and bipartisan criticism. One federal source told reporters that senior officials were “reevaluating leadership” after the political and legal blowback exploded this weekend.
President Trump himself appeared to take a tactical pivot in a series of social‑media posts on Monday, saying he had spoken with Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz and that the two men were now on a “similar wavelength” over how to reduce tensions in the city. Trump also announced that Tom Homan, former ICE chief and self‑styled “border czar,” will now take charge of federal enforcement in Minneapolis.
Bovino was one of the most visible and controversial figures in the Trump administration’s immigration push — a traveling enforcer dispatched to cities from Los Angeles and Chicago to New Orleans and Minneapolis to lead highly publicized crackdowns. Given a political‑style “commander” title by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Bovino’s tenure was marked by aggressive enforcement and an unabashed presence on social media, where he frequently blasted critics and defended agency tactics.
But his high‑profile role and insistence on being the lead face of enforcement in Minneapolis backfired when video footage of the January 24 killing of Pretti contradicted the administration’s narrative. Despite claims from DHS officials that Pretti intended to “massacre” agents, footage showed him being disarmed and then shot by an agent — a sequence that has fueled intense scrutiny and condemnation both locally and nationally.
Veteran immigration officials had reportedly grown uneasy with Bovino’s unorthodox command structure. He operated outside the traditional organizational chain of command, answering directly to DHS political appointees and serving as a de facto spokesman for the administration’s enforcement strategy.
Bovino’s exit from Minneapolis also comes as other senior figures tied to the aggressive crackdown, including Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski are said to be on unstable footing within the administration, the sources told The Atlantic.
Trump’s reshuffle signals a public retreat from the hard‑charging approach that Bovino embodied, replacing him with a new leader at a moment when the political costs of the Minneapolis operation are rising sharply. Some Border Patrol agents and leadership are expected to leave Minnesota with him, part of what sources describe as an effort to “reset” the federal presence amid sustained public outrage.
This comes at a tense time: Pretti is the second person shot and killed in Minneapolis by federal agents in recent weeks, fueling protests, lawsuits, and heated political debate over how far federal immigration enforcement should go — and at what cost to American lives and civil liberties.
