California Governor Gavin Newsom celebrated reports that Greg Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol’s “Commander at Large” in the fallout of Alex Pretti’s killing in Minneapolis on Saturday.
“Gestapo Greg is out. Keep the pressure up. It’s working,” Newsom said in a social media publication.
Bovino, who was considered the face of the operation, will return to the border in El Centro, California. He will no longer have the title of commander and won’t oversee Border Patrol agents making immigration arrests in cities in the interior. He is set to leave Minneapolis on Tuesday, with Customs and Border Protection also expected to reduce the number of agents in the city.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a social media publication that Bovino “has NOT been relieved of his duties” and “is a key part of the President’s team and a great American.”
President Donald Trump also said on Monday that border czar Tom Homan will travel to Minnesota this week and be in charge of such operations as the point of contact on the ground. According to The Wall Street Journal, Homan has advocated for a more targeted approach to deportations as ICE faces fierce backlash for the nature of the operations in the city.
One of them is Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who called for ICE to change course. Speaking on the Mark Davis Show on Monday, Abbott was asked if he was “concerned that ICE’s popularity ratings are going down.”
He replied that “they, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be reinstalled.”
“That’s not an easy task, especially under the current circumstances, but I know that they are working on a game plan to make sure that they are going to … recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to get what they wanted to do to begin with, and that is to remove people from the country,” Abbott added.
Originally published on Latin Times
