US Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino decries comparisons of ICE to Gestapo

JTA — Gregory Bovino, the US Border Patrol commander-at-large who has led federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, pushed back against critics who compared ICE agents to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

“They’re trying to portray Border Patrol agents and ICE agents as Gestapo, Nazi and many other words,” Bovino told CNN on Sunday, pronouncing the word “Gestapo” with a German accent.

At a press conference on Sunday following the killing a day prior of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents, Bovino again decried the comparison.

“When politicians, community leaders and some journalists engage in that heated rhetoric we keep talking about, when they make the choice to vilify law enforcement, calling law enforcement names like a Gestapo, or using the term kidnapping, that is a choice that is made,” said Bovino. “There are actions and consequences that come from those choices.”

Now, Bovino is reportedly leaving Minneapolis amid a backlash over the killings there. After The Atlantic reported Monday night that Bovino had been demoted to his former post in El Centro, California, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a post on X that Bovino “has NOT been relieved of his duties.”

His exit comes amid pitched debate about the appropriateness of Holocaust analogies in describing ICE’s actions in Minneapolis. Critics of ICE have frequently likened its practices to that of the Nazis, while both defenders of ICE and Jewish voices have decried such comparisons as inappropriate.

A centerpiece of the discourse has been a greatcoat worn by Bovino which some critics, and German media outlets, have said resembles the uniforms of Nazi soldiers.

“In his coat, Bovino looks like a Nazi officer,” Jörg Häntzschel wrote earlier this month in Süddeutsche Zeitung, a liberal German outlet. “Other countries also had these coats, but Bovino’s rest of the outfit completes the Nazi look: a closely shaved head, as if he’d gone to the barber with a picture of Ernst Röhm,” a leading Nazi.

Rebutting the critique, Bovino told NewsNation that the coat was “Border Patrol issue” and that he had purchased it in 1999.

Still, the coat has inspired multiple reflections on how Bovino’s sartorial choices might convey, coming as immigration enforcement has grown increasingly militarized and as US government social media accounts have posted apparent white supremacist dogwhistles.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democratic potential White House contender in 2028, described Bovino’s attire as “SS garb” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week after calling the coat “Nazi-coded” on social media.

After news of Bovino’s demotion broke, Newsom wrote in a post on X, “Gestapo Greg is out. Keep the pressure up. It’s working.”