Former senior Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino said the Trump administration “absolutely” wants him killed after taking away his security detail earlier this year, a claim the White House called “absurd.”
“Do I think they want me dead at this point? Yes.” Bovino told conservative media personality and podcaster Tucker Carlson. “I’m in a running battle every time I go out. … There’s some crazies out there.”
Since Bovino announced his retirement in March — which may not have been entirely voluntary, according to Bovino’s exit interview with The New York Times — the former top immigration official has openly criticized high-profile members of the Trump administration including White House border czar Tom Homan.
Bovino told Carlson that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s commissioner, Rodney Scott, pulled his security detail while Homan was present and said it was done in an effort to “silence” him.
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“This is absurd,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis wrote in a statement. “Tom Homan is an American patriot and career law enforcement officer with decades of experience effectively protecting American communities and deporting illegal aliens.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NOTUS that the termination of Bovino’s security detail was “standard procedure” because the protective units for federal officials are taxpayer funded.
“Federal security details are provided to designated officials while they are serving in government,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Once an individual leaves federal service, that protection ends. This is not a matter of policy or discretion; it is the law.”
Bovino is now “responsible for arranging and paying for his own security, just like other former federal officials,” the spokesperson added.
Bovino quickly rose to prominence in President Donald Trump’s second term, with then- Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem referring to him as “Border Patrol Commander at Large” in an October 2025 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
Bovino led the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration-enforcement crackdown in Minnesota called Operation Metro Surge, but he was demoted in January after federal agents shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Homan took over and ended the large-scale enforcement efforts in Minnesota, while Bovino was reassigned to his previous role as chief agent of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector in California. He then retired.
Since leaving his post in the Trump administration, Bovino has been critical of his former Homeland Security colleagues’ immigration-enforcement efforts.
When Carlson asked about the current state of illegal immigration, Bovino said “one word comes to mind, that’s catastrophe.”
“They want you to think mass deportations are happening. They’re not. It’s theater,” Bovino wrote in a post on X with the video of his appearance on Carlson’s podcast.
This story has been updated with a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
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