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gregory bovino
Bovino Launches Exploratory Committee for Presidential Campaign With Pledge to Deport 100 Million People
Bovino’s plan to purge the country of one-third of its population has been described as an “ethnic cleansing" proposal. He recently discussed it at a conference with European neo-Nazis.
Jun 09, 2026
Fresh off his appearance at a fascist conference in Portugal focused on "remigration," President Donald Trump's ex-Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino has teased a run for US president in 2028 centered around his fantasy of deporting 100 million people from the United States.
Amid public backlash following the killing of two US citizens by his federal agents in Minneapolis, Bovino was kicked from the helm of Trump’s mass deportation crusade in January and sent into early retirement.
But as he later discussed with The New York Times, he departed with a sense of unfinished business, unfulfilled that he could not exact what was described as a “master plan” to purge a third of the country.
As News Nation reported on Monday, Bovino is not one to give up on dreams easily. The 30-year Border Patrol veteran told the network that he was launching an exploratory committee for a White House run in 2028 and planned to move ahead with a formal campaign "if it all comes together."
The website for his committee, Bovino2028.com, which features an image of Bovino in his signature SS-style trenchcoat flanked by the phrase "House Bovino. Men Fight Back," gives a sense of the campaign he seeks to run.
The website describes a future President Bovino leading the US with a “warrior mindset," “quelling the foreign hordes that have subsumed our nation’s cities," and creating a “department of youth masculinity” to turn young men into “warriors for freedom,” and calls for the reestablishment of Elon Musk’s failed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
His website also does not shy away from acknowledging his role in a conference in late May were he appeared alongside representatives of the global far-right. As Charles R. Davis described late last month for The Redoubt:
The "Remigration Summit 2026," so called, was held May 30 at the Salmanha Residence hotel just south of Porto, Portugal, and its organizers were not subtle.
"Weimar conditions require Weimar solutions," argues Afonso Gonçalves, chief organizer of the event. He's the founder of the far-right group Reconquista, so named for the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. That's who Bovino was photographed standing next to after he landed in Europe.
Martin Sellner, an extremist from Austria, is best known for pushing the "great replacement" conspiracy theory— that Jewish elites are seeking to exterminate the white race via mass migration—that has motivated mass shooters from Pennsylvania to New Zealand.
He was the other man standing next to Bovino.
Other speakers included a Belgian fascist convicted of Holocaust denial and the founder of a Swiss neo-Nazi group called "Junge Tat" who is quite open about his fondness for "National Socialism."
Bovino is not looking to hide his affiliations with prominent neo-Nazis. The site prominently features a photo of himself with Sellner, who at a previous summit outlined a plan for the forced expulsion of "non-assimilated" citizens of immigrant backgrounds from Germany.
The ex-Border Patrol commander said during the conference that his and Sellner's ideas "mirror each other."
Gregory Bovino poses with Martin Sellner in an image posted to his 2028 website.(Photo from Bovino2028.com)
Confirming that he was considering a presidential run on Monday, Bovino wrote on social media: "My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here. That’s it."
According to May data from the Center for Migration Studies, the number of undocumented immigrants actually in the United States was only about 14.6 million as of 2024, meaning that what Bovino is actually proposing is the mass expulsion of tens of millions of legal immigrants, as well as naturalized and US-born citizens.
David J. Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, testified about this plot by Bovino in front of the Senate Budget Committee in March, describing it as a plan for “ethnic cleansing"—and pushing back when one Republican senator dismissed the claim as "hyperbole."
Polls indicate Americans have overwhelmingly turned against Trump's crusade to round up millions of immigrants, with strong majorities having negative views of his tactics and of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In early March, just over a month after Bovino's tenure ended, a record 50% of Americans said in a YouGov poll that they would support abolishing ICE.
But Bovino said the "grassroots support" he's seeing indicates that "the polls are completely wrong."
He said: "If I’m getting this much energy, it’s probably because 90% of the country wants mass deportations, and the media just isn’t asking the right questions."
While it is difficult to see Bovino achieving mass appeal on the back of an immigration crusade even more extreme than Trump's, Oliver Willis, a writer for the Daily Kos said it was a sign of where the base of the GOP could be heading.
"The Republican Party has increasingly tied itself to the white supremacist movement through continued support of Trump and the rising influence of figures like conservative podcaster and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes," he wrote. "Bovino considering a 2028 presidential bid shows that the party—and the wider conservative movement—isn’t moderating at all."
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DHS ‘100 Million Deportations’ Claim Was No Joke. Bovino Had ‘Master Plan’ to Purge Nearly a Third of the Country
This month, a GOP senator accused an immigration researcher of “hyperbole” for saying the Department of Homeland Security was advocating “ethnic cleansing” with its calls to expel 100 million people.
Mar 26, 2026
When the official social media account for the US Department of Homeland Security made a post glorifying the idea of “100 million deportations," it was dismissed by many as a joke, while those who said it amounted to a call for ”ethnic cleansing“ were accused of ”hyperbole.“
But the man who once led President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign says he was always dead serious about purging nearly a third of the country’s population.
On Tuesday, The New York Times published an interview with Gregory Bovino, the former “commander-at-large” of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, who was unceremoniously demoted back to his old post in El Centro, California this January, after immigration agents’ rampage across Minnesota—which included the public executions of two American citizens—ignited nationwide backlash.
Bovino, who is retiring this week at the age of 55, told the Times he had few regrets about his tenure leading the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which were marked by rampant racial profiling, large indiscriminate roundups, violations of civil liberties, and violent attacks on peaceful protesters.
But he wishes he had gone much further. According to the Times:
Mr. Bovino said he had a master plan that was in motion before his exile back to El Centro. It would have neutralized protesters, he said, and made it possible to deport 100 million people.
That is a goal that the Department of Homeland Security has widely promoted. If it sounds extreme, that’s because it’s nearly 10 times the estimated number of undocumented people in the country. It is also more than a quarter of the entire US population.
As Common Dreams reported back in late December, when DHS posted a meme about "100 million deportations," that number bears striking significance, since it was close to the number of people living in the US who identified as non-white on the 2020 census—about 96 million.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, it's also approximately the number of foreign-born people and their children, which was about 97.2 million as of 2024.
There are about 47 million foreign-born people living in the US, meaning that such a policy would also entail the deportation of around 53 million US-born citizens.
While Bovino and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have lost their jobs, it's unclear whether the new head of DHS, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, will join the push to expel 100 million people from the US.
The Times provided little exposition about how precisely Bovino planned to carry out what would be by far the largest campaign of forced displacement in American, if not world, history.
However, the article demonstrates that the idea was not simply a troll post by a social media intern, but a sincere objective for a man who answered directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security and was elevated to the position of America’s most powerful immigration enforcer.
Bovino's admission of this goal was of particular note to David J. Bier, an immigration researcher at the Cato Institute and a prominent critic of Trump's immigration policy. He discussed the "100 million deportations" goal earlier this month during a Senate Budget Committee hearing.
DHS's post came up after Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) attempted to discredit Bier by reading off supposedly "hyperbolic" posts he'd made on social media, including one accusing Republicans of thinking "they can troll their way into us accepting ethnic cleansing."
Bier responded that his post was "in regard to a Department of Homeland Security post about 100 million deportations. That is what DHS has tweeted from their account."
As Kennedy attempted to shout over Bier, the researcher said: "100 million deportations would be ethnic cleansing. You would be removing one-third of the country."
"And you don't think this is hyperbolic?" Kennedy interrupted, smirking. The senator brought up another of Bier's posts in which he claimed Trump was carrying out a "population purge agenda," adding sarcastically, "No hyperbole there!"
“When I talk about ‘population purge,’ I’m talking about the fact that they’re trying to deport US-born citizens, people born here,” Bier responded. “They are trying to deport them as well. So it’s not a ‘mass deportation' agenda. It’s also an agenda intended to reduce the population of the United States, including US-born citizens. So these are not ‘hyperbolic’ statements.”
Kennedy ignored Bier's argument, instead derisively asking "what planet" he was from and saying he triggered his "gag reflex." It is not clear if Kennedy was aware of Trump's frequent calls to "denaturalize" American citizens or his administration's efforts to eliminate the constitutional provision of birthright citizenship.
The Houston-based immigration attorney Steven Brown said that Bovino’s apparent “master plan” was “exactly what Bier testified about, since 100 million deportations would expel ”one-third of the US population and would necessitate citizens being deported to accomplish.“
Jessica Riedl, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the idea "just dangerously insane," and something out of "white supremacist fan fiction."
"These are the armed fanatics who were given police power in our cities," she added.
Noting that many of the commenters who replied to his posts expressed support for the idea, Bier warned that "DHS's 100 million deportations ethnic cleansing agenda is spreading throughout the right-wing echo chamber as it is intended. It is only a matter of time before this extremism becomes standard rhetoric for GOP candidates."
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‘We Are Not Letting Up’: Advocates Say Much More Work to Do as Bovino Exits Minnesota
The ACLU said it plans to keep up the pressure and won’t stop “until ICE and CBP stop terrorizing our community.”
Jan 27, 2026
Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino has reportedly been pushed out of his role leading President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign amid a torrent of backlash against immigration agents' lawless behavior in Minnesota in recent weeks, particularly the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis this month.
The Atlantic, which was the first to report Bovino's departure, describes it as one of the first times that a White House prone to quadrupling down on even its most outrageous excesses has buckled in the face of public outrage, with Trump reportedly mulling "a tactical shift in the administration’s mass deportation campaign."
This has not only led to Bovino—who baselessly claimed Pretti intended to "massacre law enforcement"—being demoted and sent to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire. Some of the administration's other, more aggressive anti-immigrant zealots, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her de facto chief of staff, Corey Lewandowski, are also reportedly on the hot seat.
"To be clear, this is a victory, which was won by ordinary people putting their lives on the line in the streets of Minneapolis while almost all their elected leaders kept quiet or made only muted criticism," said Jeet Heer, a writer for the Nation.
But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been at the forefront of legal resistance to the Trump administration's attacks on civil rights, warned on Monday evening that while ousting the face of the operation represented "progress," it must not breed complacency.
A spokesperson for the group noted in a video posted to social media that Bovino's demotion came shortly after the announcement that some Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents were being withdrawn from Minneapolis "as a result of public pushback," in response to its and Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) tactics.
"These are clear signals that the Trump administration is feeling our pressure," they said. "This is progress, but we are not letting up until ICE and CBP stop terrorizing our community."
"Part of how we achieve this is by telling our senators to vote no this week on a bill that would continue funding ICE without doing anything to keep our community safe," they continued.
Ezra Levin, the co-director of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, said that the exit of Bovino shows that "the people of Minnesota won and the regime is losing."
However, he said that while "we are all happy to say good riddance to Greg Bovino... our work is still not over."
"This was never about one individual," Levin said. "It is about a system of terror driven by Donald Trump and his regime. The people on the streets are doing their part, but it is up to Democrats to hold the line and follow through. The DHS funding bill cannot pass in its current form, and there must be real constraints and accountability for DHS moving forward."
After Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was gunned down this past weekend by a band of federal agents—whose identities the Trump administration has still refused to release to the public and has allowed to remain on duty—Democratic lawmakers have largely stated their intention to block a bill that would fund the government after a January 30 deadline.
That bill—which narrowly passed the House last week with seven Democrats in support after party leadership refused to whip votes against the measure—provides another $64.4 billion to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including another $10 billion for ICE. This is on top of the $170 billion in new DHS funding approved last summer when Congress passed Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Zeteo reports that as of Monday, 44 Democrats have stated their intention to vote against the bill. With seven Democrats needed to vote for the legislation in addition to all 53 Republicans, this is enough for it to be blocked. According to the report:
Senate Democrats appear to have coalesced around several demands for cleaning up ICE. While the exact language isn’t final, Democrats are prepared to demand the following, according to the [American] Prospect: an independent, federal-state investigation of the murders by DHS in Minnesota and agents’ tactics; a ban on ICE agents wearing face masks; a requirement that ICE agents wear body cameras; an end to arrest quotas and agents’ roving patrols, where they racially profile people; and a prohibition on agents illegally and unconstitutionally entering people’s homes based on “administrative warrants” that haven’t been signed by an actual judge.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), America's largest federal workers union, of which Pretti was a member, said that other Trump administration officials who smeared his name in order to defend his killing must also face accountability.
“In the immediate aftermath of Alex’s killing, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem betrayed the public trust by slandering the good name of our union brother and calling him a 'domestic terrorist,'" said AFGE national president Everett Kelley. "Alex Pretti was a patriotic ICU nurse at a [Department of Veterans Affairs] hospital who devoted his life to serving America’s veterans. That claim was reckless, defamatory, and unsupported by the facts. Noem was preceded in this false statement by Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who is also the architect of the chaotic and failed immigration policy in Minnesota."
"Our demand is clear: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was responsible for carrying out the policy that led to Alex’s needless killing, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of that policy, must resign immediately," Kelley continued. "If they refuse, President Trump must dismiss them."
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Nearly 3 Days After Killing of Alex Pretti, Feds Have Still Not Released Name of Shooters
"We have an unaccountable secret police force that answers only to Trump," said one White House reporter.
Jan 26, 2026
It has been more than 55 hours since an immigration officer's fatal shooting of Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday, and still the US government has refused to provide the public with answers about the identity of the agent, or agents, who shot him.
Just as in the case of Renee Good, who was shot by an agent earlier this month, the Trump administration has circled the wagons around the narrative that Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was a "terrorist" planning to “massacre law enforcement” a claim they have provided no evidence for aside from the fact that he was carrying a handgun, which local police have said he owned legally.
Video of Pretti's killing, recorded from multiple angles, directly contradicts the claims of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who alleged that Pretti was "brandishing a weapon" and that agents fired "defensive shots" after Pretti "violently resisted" arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security has not released any identifying information about the people who shot Pretti. Video evidence appears to show two agents firing at least ten shots at Pretti as he lay on the ground. According to an analysis of the shooting by ABC News, "one of the agents is seen in multiple verified videos emerging from the scrum with a handgun that appears to match the weapon federal officials say Pretti was carrying."
Pretti had been shoved to the ground after attempting to film officers with a cellphone. Video shows him being shoved and later pepper-sprayed by officers, even after holding up his hands in an apparent attempt to signal that he was not a threat.
In what was described as a stunning break from the usual protocol for a law enforcement-involved shooting, Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino said during a press conference on Sunday that all of the agents involved are "still working," though they had been moved out of Minneapolis. Bovino himself is reportedly expected to leave Minneapolis soon, along with other top agents.
David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, described the fact that the agents were still on duty one day after a shooting as "unreal."
"Bovino spirited the murderer out of Minnesota's jurisdiction, yet they are still 'working,'" he said. "I've never heard of that in any real police department. Never heard of that in the federal government either."
He added that "cops shot at people in seven different jurisdictions this year," and that, "in every case, the jurisdiction put the officers on admin leave as part of standard protocol."
During the same press conference, told reporters that the agents had been moved out of Minneapolis "for their safety." He then explained: "There's this thing called doxxing."
Legally speaking, the term "doxxing" refers to the public disclosure of private information like addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive information with the intent to harm the subject.
However in an effort to justify keeping the identities of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal officers a secret, including through the wearing of masks to hide their identities, the Trump administration and Republican members of Congress have adopted a much broader definition of the term that considers any attempt to identify an agent, even one involved in a shooting, as doxxing.
Last week, Noem harangued a CBS News anchor for even speaking the name of Jonathan Ross, the man who reporters identified as the shooter of Renee Good, live on the air, saying "we shouldn't have people continue to dox law enforcement."
She has previously pledged to prosecute those who reveal the identities of federal agents to the "fullest extent of the law," though so far no charges have been filed.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), publishing the name of a law enforcement officer is generally considered First Amendment-protected speech under Supreme Court rulings that protect the publishing of truthful information.
S.V. Date, a White House correspondent at HuffPost, said that the federal government's refusal to identify the agent who shot Pretti essentially "means we have an unaccountable secret police force that answers only to Trump."
"This person has still not been identified," he said, referring to the agent who shot Pretti while wearing a mask to obscure his identity. "In a real police force, that piece of information is released in the very first incident report."
Members of Congress have called for a transparent investigation into the shooting, including some Republicans who are otherwise supportive of ICE.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is not running for reelection in this year's cycle, called for a "thorough and impartial investigation" and said "any administration official who rushes to judgment and tries to shut down an investigation before it begins is doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump's legacy."
Of course, the Trump administration itself has already shut down an investigation into the shooting of Good, stating repeatedly that it would not pursue a probe into wrongdoing by Ross, while freezing out state-level investigators from information.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said that the Trump administration has ignored a court order that would allow state investigators to access evidence in Pretti's killing.
"Our state investigators had to get a warrant to have access to the evidence of the shooting of Alex Pretti," Smith said. "And even then, the federal agents refused to give them access to the evidence. So this looks very much like another cover-up."
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized what may have happened with the gun that appeared to be Pretti's removed from the scrum by one of the federal agents. The article has been updated to better describe those events.
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'Where Were You Born?' ICE Conducting Show-Me-Your-Papers Stops in Minnesota Neighborhoods
"I was scared. I was devastated," said a Somali-American citizen who was accosted by ICE as part of what the agent called a "citizen check." No such thing exists in American law.
Jan 13, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents deployed to Minnesota are pulling many nonwhite residents aside and asking them to prove their citizenship, according to several reports and multiple videos posted to social media this week amid the Trump administration's surge of immigration agents to Minneapolis.
There is no federal law requiring US citizens to carry proof of their citizenship, and immigration agents are barred from carrying out indiscriminate searches unless they have reasonable suspicion to believe that someone is in the country without authorization.
And yet, one video, posted on Sunday by a Somali resident of Minneapolis, a US citizen named Nimco Omar, shows a group of agents accosting her and asking her to show her identification as part of what they said was a "citizen check."
Omar said she was on a walk when masked agents who "looked like soldiers" approached her and began questioning her.
The video shows one of the agents asking Omar, "Do you have an ID on you, ma'am?"
She replied: "I don't need an ID to walk around in my city. This is my city."
"OK, do you have some ID, then, please?" the officer asked. "If not, we're going to put you in the vehicle, and we're going to ID you."
Omar responded: "I am a US citizen. I don't need to carry around an ID in my home. This is my home."
After being repeatedly asked, "Where were you born?" Omar replied simply, "Minneapolis is my home."
The agent then told her: "We're doing an immigration check. We're doing a citizen check."
Another agent then pulled out his cellphone and, without asking, appeared to snap a picture of Omar, likely to run through a facial recognition application that ICE has used to verify the status of people it detains—including citizens.
Omar continued to hold her ground, telling the agents: "I’m a US citizen. I don’t have to identify myself. I belong here—and it doesn’t matter where I was born.” After failing to get an answer, the agents then walked away.
"I was scared. I was devastated. I never imagined that something like this could happen to me in the United States," Omar wrote in a social media post documenting the encounter. "As a community member who grew up here, who built a life here, and who calls Minnesota home, I want to be clear: This is not acceptable. This is not something we should ever normalize. This is not what the United States of America is supposed to look like."
The scene was just the latest report of immigration agents conducting what Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said was "unlawful racial profiling by DHS agents" in a lawsuit against the agency filed Monday by the state of Minnesota. Illinois filed a similar but separate suit Monday.
"We're doing a citizen check."
Since last week, when ICE agent Jonathan Ross was filmed fatally shooting 37-year-old Renee Good in a Minneapolis neighborhood—which Vice President JD Vance said in a press conference occurred during "door-to-door" sweeps by ICE in search of undocumented migrants—several other similar cases have been documented in which immigration agents have approached nonwhite US citizens demanding they prove their citizenship.
In another case, on the same day of Good's shooting, a Somali Uber driver was pulled over outside the Minneapolis airport and asked to prove his citizenship. One of the agents told the driver he did not believe the driver's claim to be a citizen because "I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me," and asked the man where he was born repeatedly.
It mirrored another case from December in which another Somali man, a US citizen identified only as Mubashir, was tackled to the ground by immigration agents who refused to accept his government-issued Real ID as proof of citizenship.
Outcry over that case prompted Gregory Bovino, the commander at large of the US Border Patrol, who has taken part in several stops and raids as part of the Trump administration's operation in Minneapolis, to falsely claim that US citizens "must carry immigration documents" under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
About 83% of Somalis living in the US are citizens, according to census data. However, Minneapolis' large Somali population—which has an even higher rate of US citizenship—has been used as a justification by President Donald Trump to flood the city with immigration agents. In recent months, the president has referred to Somalis as “garbage” and called for them all to be deported from the country.
But Somalis have not been the only targets of arbitrary "citizenship" checks in recent days.
Another video, filmed on the day of Good's shooting, showed agents pinning a Hispanic Target employee, 17-year-old Jonathan Aguilar Garcia, to the ground, along with another employee, after asking him whether he was a US citizen. Even after shouting multiple times that he was a citizen and showing his government ID, Garcia was reportedly taken to an undisclosed location for hours with no notice given to his family about where he was or when he'd return.
In another case, detailed in the Minnesota lawsuit, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents "approached a team of four Minneapolis Public Works employees, working in Minneapolis and wearing city uniforms and badges. The agents asked the three nonwhite city employees for identification and questioned each of them about their citizenship and place of birth. The agents did not ask to see any identification or ask any questions of the fourth employee, who was white."
Four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who were homeless and living under a bridge, were also reportedly detained last week and have still not yet been located. The tribe's president has directed members to declare their tribal affiliation when encountering immigration officers, which makes them US citizens and therefore not subject to immigration enforcement.
"DHS said they were 'highly targeted' and go after 'the worst of the worst,'" said the Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security in a post on social media responding to agents' questioning of Omar. "In reality, DHS is indiscriminately profiling Black and brown American citizens.
They urged readers: "Protect yourself and your neighbors and film everything."
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Hours After US Citizen Shot Dead by ICE, JD Vance Says ‘Door-to-Door’ Operations Are Coming
"This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s."
Jan 08, 2026
Just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed an unarmed US citizen in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said the agency would soon be going "door to door" across the country to escalate the Trump administration's mass deportation crusade in the coming year.
In an interview on Fox News with host Jesse Watters, Vance boasted that during Trump's first year back in power, the administration had gotten "2.5 million illegal aliens out" of the country, "without any of the really big marquee things that we've been working on."
Notably, only about 600,000 of these have been through formal deportations, while the rest have been through what the White House claims are "self-deportations." Despite claims to the contrary, the vast majority of those detained by ICE have had no criminal records. Many have been legal residents, green card holders, and asylum seekers following the legal process.
ICE’s budget is expected to triple in 2026 following the passage of Republican budget legislation last year that has allowed it to launch what it calls a “wartime recruitment” strategy, hiring as many as 10,000 new officers with minimal training. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the agency had earmarked $100 million toward online recruitment advertisements, meant to draw in “people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts, or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear.”
Vance continued, "I think we're going to see those [deportation] numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online and working for ICE, going door to door and making sure that if you're an illegal alien, you've got to get out of this country, and if you want to come back, apply through the proper channels."
Vance’s comments came shortly after news broke that an ICE agent had fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis resident and widowed mother of three children, as she attempted to drive away from the scene in her car. Good was at the scene as a legal observer following a surge of more than 2,000 ICE agents to the city.
The Trump administration has stood by the ICE shooter and described Good as a "domestic terrorist" who attempted to run over the agent in her car. But video evidence contradicts this claim, showing Good attempting to pivot her car away from the agents and only accelerating the vehicle after shots were fired, while the agent walked away from the incident unharmed.
Especially in light of the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen who was legally observing agents, Vance’s comments about ICE going “door to door” to homes in the coming year sounded ominous to many.
"Door to door?" asked one incredulous social media user. "The Fourth Amendment still exists. This is starting to look disturbingly like Germany in the 1930s."
"Under the Fourth Amendment, federal agents are generally not allowed to stop someone unless they have good reason to suspect that they are breaking laws," explained Jesse Franzblau, the associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing in November. "Yet a growing number of people, many of them Latinx, have reported being targeted, harassed, and detained by ICE and CBP agents solely because of their race."
The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that Fourth Amendment protections are strongest in the home, where the government is required to obtain a judicial warrant before entering private residences. However, in many cases, ICE has flouted these rules when carrying out arrests.
"Whether you’re left or right, the thought of living in an America where the government goes 'door to door,' and that those words actually came out of the vice president of the United States’ mouth, should worry you deeply," said Simon Samano, an editor at USA Today.
The Trump administration has increasingly promoted the idea of using ICE to target American citizens. The administration has pledged to strip citizenship from as many as 200 naturalized citizens per month in 2026, a tenfold increase from previous years. Trump and his allies have suggested using denaturalization to kick out some of his top critics, including the Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York City's first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
Last week, a post by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, glorified the idea of Trump carrying out "100 million deportations," which, if realized, would necessitate the stripping of citizenship from tens of millions of naturalized and US-born citizens. According to a YouGov poll published last week, the majority of Republican voters support the idea of deporting over a fourth of the country.
In October, ProPublica reported that at least 170 US citizens had been wrongly detained in immigration custody since Trump returned to office last January. Meanwhile, Gregory Bovino, the commander at large of the Border Patrol, has previously suggested that US citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice if stopped by immigration agents.
Yet on Wednesday, even after an agent shot a US citizen in cold blood, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, clad in an oversized cowboy hat, assured the public that “anyone who is a citizen of this country or is here legally has nothing to fear.”
Hours after Good was shot, another group of agents, including Bovino, were filmed demanding the identification of another driver, a Somali man who said he was an Uber driver waiting to pick up a passenger at the Minneapolis airport, asking him to prove his US citizenship.
One of the agents was heard telling the man he did not believe he was a US citizen because "I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me.”
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'A Chilling Assertion': Trump Officials Falsely Claim Citizens Must Carry Immigration Docs to Prove Their Status
“There is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them," said an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.
Dec 15, 2025
Federal law enforcement agencies are detaining US citizens who do not carry proof of their citizenship in what civil rights advocates describe as a flagrant violation of constitutional rights—and a top Trump administration official is claiming the government has the authority to do so.
A Somali-born Minnesota man was alarmed by the practice last Tuesday when immigration agents tackled him, handcuffed him, and arrested him, refusing to accept his REAL ID as proof of his legal residence in a video that was widely circulated on social media.
The man, who identified only as Mubashir, was placed into a chokehold and forced to his knees in the snow on his way to get food in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which has a large Somali population.
As the Sahan Journal describes:
Mubashir said he told officers multiple times that he is a US citizen and asked if he could show them his ID. Officers ignored him, dragged him in the snow, and pushed him into a car as witnesses yelled and blew whistles, according to the video of his arrest.
The arrest occurred as federal agents walked into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports. Mubashir said he was in the car with officers for about 20 minutes, asking them repeatedly if he could show them his ID. They refused, he said.
According to the report, officers asked if they could photograph Mubashir to check whether he's a US citizen—likely to run his information through a facial recognition application that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has acknowledged it uses during immigration stops, including on US citizens without their consent.
Mubashir declined to have his photo taken, asking: "How would a picture prove I’m a US citizen?”
He was later taken to a federal building that houses an immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. Only after having his fingerprint taken was Mubashir allowed to present his ID and given permission to leave.
Officers refused to drop him back off at Cedar-Riverside, instead telling him to walk home more than seven miles in the midst of a snowstorm, which had led authorities to issue a weather advisory.
“I deserve to be here like anyone else—I’m a US citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.”
"I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say 'police.' That's embarrassing," Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said to Mubashir during a press conference on Wednesday.
According to legal experts, there is no requirement under US law that American citizens must be prepared to prove their citizenship at a moment's notice.
In comments to KQED, a public radio station in San Francisco, earlier this month, Richard Boswell, a law professor at the University of California Law School, called it “most troubling” that US citizens have felt the need to carry their ID to avoid harassment.
“There is no reason why government officers can or should be questioning people about their citizenship without any reason to suspect that they are noncitizens who are here unlawfully,” he explained.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), noncitizens must carry proof of their legal status, such as a green card or a foreign passport with stamps indicating a lawful visa.
About two dozen states require residents to identify themselves if stopped by law enforcement. But none require citizens to carry a physical ID at all times, except in specific cases, such as operating a motorized vehicle.
And, as Bree Bernwanger, a senior attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, explained, “there is no legal requirement that US citizens carry papers or have proof of their citizenship on them." Unless police have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the US unlawfully, she said, "there shouldn’t be a reason to have to carry your papers, because immigration agents aren’t supposed to stop people or detain them."
But as backlash rolled in from the video of Mubashir's arrest, the man leading Trump's mass deportation crusade, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, seemed to falsely suggest via social media that citizens are required to carry proof of their citizenship.
"One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A REAL ID is not an immigration document," he wrote in response to a post about Mubashir's arrest, which noted his citizenship.
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, responded that "in no way does the INA require citizens to carry immigration documents" and that Bovino is "just letting his jackboot thugs presumptively detain whomever they like."
Add to this that HSI just filed a declaration in our case challenging these policies saying they can’t trust REAL IDs as proof of status.So showing your papers isn’t even enough to end the stop.
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— Jared (@jaredmcclain.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Immigration lawyer Jared McClain later noted on social media that, in response to a class-action suit arguing against indiscriminate workplace raids, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) argued that an Alabama construction worker, who was kept in handcuffs even after presenting multiple REAL IDs to agents, had still not done enough to prove his citizenship, according to the federal officers.
"This is the official policy—not a one-off," McClain said.
Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the filing was "official confirmation that ICE HSI believes that it can, in fact, detain US citizens for immigration checks, and keep them handcuffed while they have their biometrics run."
"That is a chilling assertion," he said.
ProPublica found in October that at least 170 Americans have been detained by immigration agents, sometimes for days, with some having been "dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot."
But months after the report was published, top administration officials—including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—continue to emphatically deny that any US citizens have been detained during the second Trump administration.
At a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday, Noem abruptly left before Democrats could grill her on reports that citizens had been arrested, claiming she had to speak at a different committee hearing. Reports later found that the hearing had already been cancelled, leading to accusations that Noem misled Congress.
In response to Bovino's assertion that REAL IDs are not immigration documents, Nicole Foy, a reporter at ProPublica, told the Border Patrol commander: "We've been trying to request an interview with you for months now about the enforcement operations you're leading and the detention of US citizens."
"Why does a US citizen need to carry immigration documents?" she asked. At press time, Bovino had not publicly responded to Foy's question.
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'We Do Not Want ICE Here': NC Officials Oppose Trump Targeting Immigrants in Charlotte
"Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity," said Congresswoman Alma Adams, warning of "what we have seen Border Patrol and ICE agents do in places like Chicago and Los Angeles."
Nov 14, 2025
Elected officials in North Carolina are letting it be known they do not want to see federal immigration raids in their communities like those suffered by other states in recent months.
As CBS News reported Friday morning that after two months of terrorizing Chicago, US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino left for Charlotte, officials came together in his apparent destination to speak out against the looming assault on immigrants there.
"We're all gathered here from many branches of government, from obviously our state Legislature, our school board, our County Commission, our City Council members, because we do not want ICE here," said state House Rep. Aisha Dew (D-107), referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"We do not need to have Border Patrol. As I've already said, I'm not quite sure what border we're patrolling here," she continued. Stressing that the surrounding US states pose no threat to North Carolina, Dew added that "this is a safe city. Our crime rates have gone down since the previous year. This is just another something out of the playbook."
The press conference—which also included leaders of local organizations—came after various reports this week cited unnamed US officials who said President Donald Trump has set his sights on Charlotte.
Amid mounting reports of the forthcoming operation, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry L. McFadden said in a Thursday statement that he was contacted a day earlier "by two separate federal officials confirming that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel will be arriving in the Charlotte area as early as this Saturday or the beginning of next week."
"At this time, specific details regarding the federal operation have not been disclosed and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) has not been requested to assist with or participate in any enforcement actions," the statement highlighted.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department similarly said in a Friday statement that CMPD "has no authority to enforce federal immigration laws" and "does not participate in ICE operations, nor are we involved in the planning of these federal activities."
ICE and CBP are both part of the US Department of Homeland Security. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has declined to provide any details about possible action in Charlotte, telling multiple outlets: "Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country. We do not discuss future or potential operations."
As the Associated Press noted Thursday:
Trump has defended sending the military and immigration agents into Democratic-run cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and even the nation's capital, saying the unprecedented operations are needed to fight crime and carry out his mass deportation agenda.
Charlotte is another such Democratic stronghold. A statement of solidarity from several local and state officials estimated the city is home to more than 150,000 foreign-born people. The city's population is about 40% white, 33% Black, 16% Hispanic, and 7% Asian.
While a spokesperson for North Carolina Congressman Tim Moore, a Republican whose district includes parts of Mecklenburg County, expressed support for DHS in a statement to the Charlotte Observer, Democratic Congresswoman Alma Adams, who represents the targeted city, sounded the alarm about the department's reported plans.
"I am extremely concerned about the deployment of US Border Patrol and ICE agents to Charlotte," Adams said in a Thursday statement. "Charlotte's immigrant community is a proud part of the Queen City, and I will not stand by and watch my constituents be intimidated or harassed."
"Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, and what we have seen Border Patrol and ICE agents do in places like Chicago and Los Angeles—using excessive force in their operations and tear gassing peaceful protestors—threatens the well-being of the communities they enter," she continued. "Those tactics and values have no place in the city of Charlotte or Mecklenburg County."
After the sheriff's Thursday announcement, Charlotte's Democratic mayor, Vi Lyles, also shared a statement on social media: "We still don't know any details on where they may be operating and to what extent. I understand this news will create uncertainty and anxiety for many people in our community. Everyone in our community deserves to feel secure, and I am committed to doing all that I can to inform our community, help make sure everyone feels safe, and understands their rights."
"It is also important that people understand CMPD is not involved in federal immigration activities, so people who need local law enforcement services should feel secure calling 911," she added. "There continues to be rumors about enforcement activities and I would ask that everyone refrain from sharing unverified information. Doing so creates more fear and uncertainty when we need to be standing together. We will continue to work with local and state partners to do what we can to ensure the safety of our community."
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Top ICE Official Says Protesters Can Be Arrested for Simply Criticizing Mass Deportation Campaign: Court Filing
"It's impossible to overstate how much of what ICE is doing on the ground reflects this completely preposterous conflation of hostile speech and hostile conduct," commented one legal expert.
Nov 04, 2025
A court filing released late on Monday alleged that US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino said that merely making what he called "hyperbolic comments" about immigration enforcement operations, including President Donald Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago, was enough to justify being arrested.
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday, attorneys representing several Chicago-based media organizations who are suing to restrict federal immigration agents' use of force in their city claimed that Bovino said during a sworn deposition that "he has instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations."
The attorneys also said in the court document that Russell Hott, the field director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Chicago, said during his deposition that he did not agree that it would be "unconstitutional to arrest people" simply for expressing opposition to his agency's current mass deportation operation in the Windy City.
This section of the filing caught the attention of Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, who said it appeared federal immigration officials are straightforwardly violating the First Amendment right to peacefully protest.
"It's impossible to overstate how much of what ICE is doing on the ground reflects this completely preposterous conflation of hostile speech and hostile conduct," he wrote in a post on Bluesky. "The First Amendment protects—or, at least, is supposed to protect—the former up and until it's a 'true threat,' which none of this is."
Elsewhere in the filing, the plaintiffs' attorneys alleged that Bovino said during testimony that he had "interacted with many violent rioters and individuals" at the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, which in recent weeks has become the focal point of local protests. Additionally, the attorneys wrote, Bovino would "not admit he has ever seen protesters who were not violent rioters."
The attorneys commented that "by Bovino's logic, anyone who shows up to protest is presumptively violent or assaultive and he can 'go hard' against them."
The case involving the Chicago media organizations and federal immigration enforcement officials is currently being overseen by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis, who last month issued a temporary restraining order that barred federal officers from using riot control weapons “on members of the press, protestors, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others.”
Federal immigration officials have been employing increasingly aggressive and violent tactics in the Chicago area in recent weeks, including attacking a journalist and a protesting priest with pepper balls outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility; slamming a congressional candidate to the ground; dragging US citizens, including children, out of their homes during a raid in the middle of the night; and fatally shooting a man during a traffic stop.
A hearing on whether to make permanent Ellis’ restraining order which strictly limits the use of riot control munitions has been set for November 5.
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Chicago Judge Demands Answers From Border Patrol Chief Over Tear Gas at Kids' Halloween Parade
"Their sense of safety was shattered," the judge said of local children whose Halloween parade was disrupted by federal agents deploying tear gas in their vicinity.
Oct 28, 2025
A Chicago judge rebuked US Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino on Tuesday after several of his agents over the weekend deployed tear gas in a neighborhood where local children were preparing for a Halloween parade—in violation of a previous court order barring the use of the chemical unless federal officers are in immediate danger.
During a court appearance, Bovine was dressed down by US District Court Judge Sara Ellis, who said Border Patrol agents had violated her earlier restraining order that barred US Department of Homeland Security officials from using riot control weapons “on members of the press, protestors, or religious practitioners who are not posing an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer or others."
As reported by Heather Cherone, a politics reporter at local Chicago news station WTTW, Ellis grilled Bovine about multiple uses of force by federal immigration agents in recent weeks.
First, Ellis asked Bovine to comment on allegations filed in her court last week about federal immigration agents pointing a gun at a man who was peacefully protesting against their actions while standing on the side of a public street.
Bovine replied that he did not know the specific details of that incident, which Ellis said violated her earlier restraining order "on its face."
Next, Ellis described video footage taken last weekend in the neighborhood of Old Irving Park showing federal immigration agents placing a US citizen in a chokehold after he had approached agents and asked them what they were doing. In this case, Bovino acknowledged that this action as described would not be an appropriate use of force.
Finally, Ellis asked Bovino about the tear gas deployed in Old Irving Park as families were preparing for an annual children’s Halloween parade. The Border Patrol agents' use of the chemical appeared impossible to justify, said Elliis, given all known facts.
"These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered," Ellis said, referring to children in the neighborhood. "It is going to take a long time to come back, if ever."
According to Chicago Tribune reporter Jason Meisner, Ellis also told Bovino that kids should feel they're able to go to local Halloween events without having to "worry about getting tear-gassed."
"That’s not how any of us want to live," Ellis emphasized. "I know you wouldn’t want to live that way."
The federal immigration operation in Old Irving Park on Saturday targeted a man named Luis Villegas, an undocumented immigrant who was working in the area and who, according to his brother, was brought to the US when he was four years old.
Agents detained two other people in the neighborhood in addition to Villegas, and deployed tear gas after several neighbors came out of their homes to yell at the officers, film them, and demand that they leave the neighborhood. A former Cook County prosecutor who lives in Old Irving Park and witnessed Villegas' arrest told reporters that the agents were never under any threat.
Ellis ordered Bovino to appear in her courtroom every single day going forward to recap his agents’ actions in the district, according to Cherone.
She also demanded that Bovino ensure that every one of his officers is equipped with a body camera, and to submit all reports on use of force incidents and corresponding body camera footage by Friday.
A hearing on whether to make permanent Ellis' restraining order which strictly limits the use of riot control munitions has been set for November 5, according to Cherone.
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