Trump’s Border Patrol Bulldog

 

On Oct. 27, the Washington Examiner reported the Trump administration’s quiet removal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office directors in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Diego. These officials — career civil servants with decades in immigration enforcement — were told their services were no longer needed. The replacements come from Customs and Border Protection, an agency with different mandates, training and operational culture. This is not just personnel churn, but signals a major shift in border enforcement tactics toward cities, nationalizing the model tested in California and Chicago under CBP commander Gregory Bovino. 

Earlier this year, Bovino gave the administration the template when he deployed Border Patrol units hundreds of miles from U.S. borders, publicly confronted local officials and staged enforcement theatrics as shows of federal authority. The ICE leadership removals turn these tactics into standard structure. The logic of the border is being relocated inward, with senior Border Patrol agents inserted into positions that have historically prioritized administrative discretion and coordination with local governments. The “wild west” is suddenly everywhere.

Bovino is where this shift becomes visible. On a September afternoon in Chicago, he was filmed outside the Broadview ICE facility, unmasked among a scrum of masked agents. He is the public face of what Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker calls the “march toward autocracy.” The 55-year-old career bureaucrat is the low-rent Douglas MacArthur of a federal invasion, overseeing operations involving the tear-gassing and pepper-balling of lawful protesters and journalists. His visibility has always been strategic, a performance of authority that sends the message: The federal government will no longer defer to local resistance in sanctuary cities.

The 55-year-old career bureaucrat is the low-rent Douglas MacArthur of a federal invasion.

A career operator shaped by the post-9/11 security state, Bovino earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude and completed two master’s degrees (one from the National War College) before beginning his three-decade tenure with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He was assigned to Honduras, Egypt and Africa before taking on senior posts in New Orleans and El Centro, California.

His rise stalled in August 2023, when he was relieved of command of the El Centro sector 30 minutes after delivering congressional testimony critical of the Biden administration’s border strategy. Official explanations cited unspecified “inappropriate” social media posts and an online profile photo showing Bovino holding an M4 assault rifle. But the core transgression was no mystery: He had stepped out of the role of neutral administrator and into the role of political actor.

When President Donald Trump returned to office, what had been a reprimand became a qualification. In June 2025, Bovino was placed in charge of large-scale interior enforcement operations, leading Operation At Large in California and Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, with discussions underway for Boston and San Francisco. (The latter was called off in October after sustained protests forced a partial retreat). 

Under Trump, unprofessional shows of force are not a liability, but are valued for the spectacle they produce. Gregory Bovino exemplifies this, visibly and enthusiastically. 

By late last summer, Operation At Large had pushed Border Patrol far from the actual border and made immigration enforcement a mobile campaign. When the focus shifted to Chicago, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled the city a “war zone.” When Mayor Brandon Johnson barred federal agents from using city-owned property, Bovino replied on camera: “If someone steps in the way … that may not work out well for them, and if we need to effect an arrest of a U.S. citizen or anyone else, then we’ll do that.”

Meanwhile, the legal groundwork for transforming political protest into domestic terrorism was finalized. On April 28, Trump signed an executive order titled Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement that rolled back consent decrees (which limited police power) and created indemnification guarantees for officers accused of misconduct.

Then, in September, the memorandum on Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, known as NSPM-7, widened the definition of “domestic terrorism” to include the nonprofit infrastructure around protest movements, authorizing joint terrorism task forces to investigate donors and support networks. In parallel, ICE’s social media monitoring hub began flagging so-called domestic terrorism targets, shifting a border security apparatus inward toward domestic surveillance.

The ICE leadership removals are integral to the functioning of this broader framework. Replacing career field office directors with senior Border Patrol officials imports the California and Chicago model into the permanent structure of interior enforcement. What were temporary surge operations are the new bureaucratic baseline. The tactical mindset refined at the physical border is now shaping the administrative norms that shape ICE’s expanding interior mission.

This was visible on Sept. 30 when tactical units raided an apartment complex on South Shore Drive in Chicago. Thirty-seven people were detained, including women, children and U.S. citizens. One resident, Tony Wilson, described his door being cut open with a grinder before agents zip-tied him and held him for hours. This echoes 2020’s Operation Legend, when masked DHS tactical teams executed smaller-scale raids in the city under the pretext of protecting federal property during that summer’s protests.

As Bovino rises in command, the transition he is meant to oversee has hit legal speed bumps in the form of multiple federal civil rights lawsuits that name him as a defendant. In July, a federal judge found that immigration stops in Southern California were predicated on factors like race, language, occupation and location in issuing a temporary restraining order that was later lifted by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the ruling subjects “countless people in the Los Angeles area” to the indignity of being detained “simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.” The ACLU’s class-action lawsuit over Operation Return to Sender alleged that agents coerced detainees into signing voluntary departure waivers. 

A Chicago Headline Club lawsuit accused federal forces of systematic First Amendment violations, including the use of force against journalists, clergy and elected officials.

The not-so-hidden objective is to place border patrol at the center of domestic law enforcement.

The not-so-hidden objective is to place border patrol at the center of domestic law enforcement, with the first model operations documented and distributed by the agencies themselves. On Star Wars Day (May the 4th), Bovino shared a “Border Wars” trailer casting the El Centro Sector Border Patrol as Darth Vader battling “fake news,” “sanctuary cities” and “invasion.” When a federal judge issued the Los Angeles restraining order, Bovino dismissed it on social media as a “very poorly written (very poorly) temp restraining order.”

Deploying units inside dense urban environments increases the likelihood of escalation for both officers and residents, but the Trump administration seems to see such conflict as a feature, not a bug. The replacement of ICE field office directors with senior Border Patrol officials shows that the experiment of Bovino’s approach has been deemed successful and has been formalized, leading to more unrest and harder crackdowns.

The border now exists wherever enforcement is staged. The aborted San Francisco surge showed that public resistance can still force a pause, but the broader shift continues. Where it stops, nobody knows. But Bovino suggested one ominous destination in August when he sent his agents to crash a press conference held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders. The subject? How the state can resist GOP efforts to gerrymander a permanent lock on Congress.

-Truthdig

Trump’s Border Patrol Bulldog - Truthdig