Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Ordered To Explain Why Personally Violated A Court Order On Force Usage

from the ‘i’m-an-asshole’-probably-not-an-acceptable-excuse dept

Gregory Bovino probably only answers to two people. The first person would be himself. If he wants to do it, he does it, no matter what the actual chain of command is.

On the morning of Jan. 7, Jesús Ramírez and other day laborers huddled in a Home Depot parking lot in Bakersfield, California, hoping for work.

Suddenly, they were surrounded by U.S. Homeland Security vehicles.

One agent demanded Ramírez show his papers. When he pulled out his wallet, the agent “snatched” it and took his ID without asking questions, Ramírez said.

“It was clear to me the agents did not know who I was,” Ramírez, 64, said in a court filing translated from Spanish. “They did not show me any document or have a warrant for me.”

He was among 78 people arrested during an immigration enforcement mission, “Operation Return to Sender,” carried out less than two weeks before Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Note the date: January 7. Trump had already been elected but was not yet in office. That would be the other person Bovino is willing to answer to, even if that person isn’t actually his boss at that point in time.

Bovino launched “Return to Sender,” the mission to California’s Central Valley earlier this year, without approval from the Biden administration, the Atlantic magazine reported.

Also note what Jesus Ramirez said. This wasn’t a targeted raid, no matter what Bovino claimed after the fact. The documents speak for themselves.

[A] CalMatters investigation, in partnership with Evident and Bellingcat, found that Border Patrol officials misrepresented the very basics of their high-profile, large-scale immigration raid. Data obtained from U.S. Customs and Border Protection reveal that Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of criminal or immigration history for 77 of the 78 people arrested. 

In a spreadsheet provided by the agency, under “Criminal History,” all but one entry contains the following passage: “Criminal and/or immigration history was not known prior to the encounter.”

Bovino is now in Chicago, far from the southern border he’s used to patrolling. But he’s still the same old Bovino — an asshat with a bad haircut who thinks no one can tell him what to do, not even federal court judges.

After plaintiffs secured a restraining order restricting the use of crowd control projectiles against people engaged in protected speech, Bovino immediately ensured the court order was violated. And he decided he should be the person to do it. The court order said tear gas couldn’t be used until after clear orders to disperse had been ignored. Bovino said fuck it and hurled tear gas into a peaceful crowd that had done nothing more than stand a few feet away from Bovino and other immigration enforcement officers.

That’s from the filing [PDF] submitted by the plaintiffs, asking Judge Sara Ellis to take note of this blatant violation of her court order. And if you don’t care for still photos, here’s a recording of Bovino violating the court order:

That was apparently all Judge Ellis needed to see or hear.

U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis ordered Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who has led a series of increasingly aggressive raids across Chicago and the suburbs, to appear in her courtroom in person at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Ellis’ order came less than 24 hours after Bovino fired tear gas at a crowd during an aggressive raid in Little Village. Bovino accompanied agents on raids in Little Village Wednesday and Thursday.

But we’ll have to wait and see how this will play out. Bovino certainly acts like he’s above the law. Not only that, he states to journalists that he’s above the law. First, he insulted the judge. And then he basically said he’d continue to ignore court orders because they’re not the boss of him (paraphrasing). This is from the same filing that includes the screenshot of Bovino’s tear gas tossing:

[M]ultiple declarants and numerous video clips demonstrate that the crowd in Little Village was peaceful at the moment Defendant Bovino started the conflict by launching cannisters of tear gas into the assembled crowd, and that no warnings or dispersal orders were given before he did so.

[…]

Following the incident, Defendant Bovino was interviewed by a reporter. In that interview, Defendant Bovino appears uninjured. He says in response to questions words to the effect of, “Did Judge Ellis get hit in the head by a rock like I did this morning?” Defendant Bovino continues saying something like, “maybe she needs to see what that’s like before she gives an order like that.”

Here’s the recording cited in the filing:

The filing notes Bovino does not appear to be injured. And the government hasn’t filed any declaration backing Bovino’s claims.

But that’s not all Bovino said during that interview. He literally stated he was not obligated to follow orders given by federal courts:

In that same interview discussed above, Defendant Bovino also stated, “I take my orders from the executive branch,” suggesting disdain for this Court’s authority to enjoin his unlawful conduct.

Bovino continued running his mouth to other reporters, claiming that getting hit by pepper balls is your own fault if you insist on making use of your First Amendment rights:

Asked whether firing from elevated positions or above the waist violates DHS policy, Bovino insisted, “It doesn’t matter where you fire from … that is a less lethal device for area saturation.” As for shots striking protesters above the waist, he said, “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.“

OK. That’s fucked up. This is a grown-ass man using a rhetorical device most famously deployed by two elementary school students in a cartoon. Worse, Bovino isn’t going to wait for people to “stray” into the line of his unlawful fire. He and his boys are going to instigate violence and reverse engineer justifications for their actions.

As the filing notes, the DHS claimed a “mob” surrounded officers and threw projectiles, including “commercial artillery shell fireworks.” The lawyers handling this case don’t mince words when responding to the government’s assertions:

The statement is a lie.

If Bovino bothers to show up in court, there will be plenty more of those. Given this inevitability, courts need to consider engaging in extreme measures to ensure compliance. The “presumption of regularity” no longer exists under Trump. The entire administration has demonstrated it believes it answers to no one — an internal rot that has infected everything it touches. In the past, people like Bovino would be considered aberrations: rogue officials in need of a good firing. These days, Bovino is the rule, rather than the exception. And this nation’s courts need to respond to this “new normal” accordingly.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, border patrol, gregory bovino, mass deportation, protests, sara ellis, trump administration