Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief leading the Southern California immigration crackdown that has stirred outrage and won the admiration of President Trump, said he had been told by federal officials to be on standby.
He may be tapped to recreate his aggressive Los Angeles raids in other American cities.
“I’ve definitely received direction to be ready in the event that they want me to go,” Mr. Bovino said.
Mr. Bovino, 55, is the face of the Trump administration’s campaign to round up, detain and deport thousands of undocumented immigrants in the nation’s second-largest city. In just 11 weeks, he has gone from being the little-known head of one of the least busy sectors on America’s Southern border to the tactical commander of a contentious multiagency federal operation.
He has been testing the limits of politicized law enforcement, clashing on social media with California Democrats and producing Hollywood-style promotional videos of his masked, heavily armed officers marching to Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.” He questioned an Army general’s loyalty to the country when the general expressed reservations about the National Guard’s involvement in one show of force at a Los Angeles park, according to court testimony. And he’s a named defendant in two lawsuits accusing his agents of crossing legal lines, including arresting Latino residents based on their skin color and regardless of their immigration status.
Mr. Bovino’s supporters say he’s helping to pull undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records off the streets. One of the biggest fans of his work is Mr. Trump. “The president called into the entire team that was assembled just to say, ‘Thank you, and you’re doing a good job in Los Angeles,’” Mr. Bovino said of a recent call with Mr. Trump.
His critics have a sharply different view, describing him as a showboat with a badge and a gun whose agents are using racial profiling to scoop up Hispanic men, women and teenagers. Outside of the federal takeover of the police force in the nation’s capital, no other region in America has seen such an aggressive display of federal force.