Ousted Border Patrol Officer Greg Bovino was revealed Tuesday to have claimed minority status, according to previously unreported legal documents obtained by The New York Times and despite his admission to having referred to undocumented migrants as “filth” and “trash.”
Bovino was moved out of his role at “commander at large” of the US Border Patrol in January following the deadly immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that led to the killings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Set to retire this week, Bovino spoke with the Times for a Tuesday report that uncovered a surprising revelation.
Bovino was forced to testify shortly after being assigned to work in Louisiana in 2018 in a discrimination lawsuit filed against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by four DHS employees. During his testimony, Bovino admitted to calling undocumented migrants “scum,” “filth” and “trash.”
In his testimony, he also admitted that he claimed to be a member of a minority group himself.
“He identified his race as ‘Native American’ and his tribe as Cherokee,” the Times report reads. “He testified that he had identified this way since he was 8 years old, but said he was not registered on any official tribal rolls. To reward top performance, he said, he gave out tomahawks.”
In its report, the Times also spoke to several current and former DHS officials, many of whom referred to Bovino as a longstanding “chronic institutional headache,” and even among those “who generally shared his politics,” the Times reported.
“He had no trouble putting himself out there as better than the others and doing that in front of them,” said Chris Magnus, formerly the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection from 2021 to 2022, speaking with the Times. “It struck me as particularly unprofessional, disturbing and, frankly, obnoxious, how he interacted with both his colleagues and his subordinates.”