The man who oversaw immigration operations that left two U.S. citizens dead in the streets of Minneapolis now wants to be president. The former Border Patrol commander-at-large who became the public face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, Greg Bovino, is exploring a 2028 run.
You heard that right. Bovino has launched an exploratory committee for a 2028 White House run, NewsNation confirmed this week. The Daily Beast was first to report the possible campaign.
For anyone who hasn’t been following the wreckage, here’s the short version: this is a serious thing that a serious number of people apparently want to happen.
A Campaign Built on a Coat
Bovino is exploring a 2028 run for president through a website, Bovino2028.com, and the branding tells you everything. (The website is not linked because Resist Hate refuses to help Bovino by sending visitors to his site.)
The site’s logo reads “House Bovino — Men Fight Back.” Its copy praises “The Commander” for “quelling the foreign hordes that have subsumed our nation’s cities.”
The hero image shows Bovino in a coat that critics have described as Nazi-era — the same coat California Gov. Gavin Newsom called “SS garb” while speaking at the World Economic Forum in January.
Bovino claimed Border Patrol issued the coat and that he’s owned it for more than 25 years. We’ll let readers sit with his choice to make that coat the centerpiece of a presidential brand.
What “the Front Lines” Actually Looked Like
Bovino’s pitch is simple, and he’s made it over and over: mass deportation is the only answer.
“If I were President,” he told The Daily Beast, “I’d lead that effort from the front and be on the front lines from time to time.”
It’s worth remembering what the front lines looked like when he was running them.
Bovino directed enforcement surges in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, where tear gas became a routine tool against protesters.
He was removed from his command in January after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis within weeks of each other.
Renee Good, 37, was shot and killed by an ICE officer on January 7. Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a VA medical center, was killed by Border Patrol agents on January 24 — bystander video showed him holding a cellphone, not a weapon, when he was shot.
Both were American citizens.
Both have families who are still waiting for answers, as Minnesota officials sue the federal government for access to evidence the Justice Department and DHS have refused to hand over.
Even President Trump kept his distance afterward, calling Bovino “a pretty out there kind of a guy” and conceding, “Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
White House border czar Tom Homan took over the operation and pointedly said he wasn’t there for the cameras — a not-so-subtle dig at the on-screen persona Bovino had cultivated throughout the surge.
These were not statistics.
They were people, killed in their own city, by their own government, during operations the would-be candidate now lists on his résumé as proof of “true leadership.”
The Number That Doesn’t Exist
Central to Bovino’s entire case is a figure he repeats constantly: that more than 100 million immigrants are living in the United States illegally. In one statement he put it at 106 million.
That number is fiction. The most recent Pew Research Center estimate put the undocumented population at a record 14 million in 2023 — and even that high-water mark is believed to have fallen since.
The Department of Homeland Security’s own statisticians have landed in the same ballpark, around 11 million.
Bovino’s figure isn’t an exaggeration; it’s roughly seven to ten times larger than what any credible source has ever measured.
A presidential platform built on deporting 100 million people is a platform built on deporting tens of millions of citizens and lawful residents who, by every actual count, don’t exist as he describes them.
Possible source of the 106 million number: JVL, a host on the Bulwark podcast, has a theory. He did the math to find the percentage of Bovino’s number and the total U.S. population: Roughly 33%.
He then researched the U.S. population by broken down by demographic. The total percentage of brown and Black citizens in the country is…
Roughly 33%.
White Nationalist Greg Bovino wants to get rid of all Black and brown people in the country, regardless of legal status.
Even His Own Side is “Irrelevant”
Since retiring after nearly 30 years, Bovino has spent his time on X attacking the very administration he served.
He’s accused DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin of “holding back” ICE officers at Delaney Hall, the New Jersey detention center where detainees’ families and advocates have repeatedly protested conditions inside.
He’s gone after Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for supposedly “watering down” mass deportations.
His complaint, again and again, is that the crackdown isn’t cruel enough.
Mullin’s response says plenty: “I’ve never met the guy. He’s irrelevant to me. I don’t know who he is.”
That may be the most honest review the Bovino 2028 campaign gets.
But irrelevance has a way of becoming relevant when enough money and grievance line up behind it — and the people building “House Bovino” are betting it will.
Greg Bovino is exploring a 2028 run for president. The rest of us should be paying attention now, not in 2028.
