Bovino's Exit

Susan Estrich on Jan 29, 2026

Getting rid of Gregory Bovino, who had been the face (intentionally so) of President Donald Trump's war on immigrants, is a first step, but it is hardly enough. "You know, Bovino is very good, but he's a pretty out-there kind of a guy," Trump said in a Fox News interview Tuesday. "And in some cases, that's good. Maybe it wasn't good here."

In what cases was that good? When Bovino was here in Los Angeles, he got on a horse and led a military-style assault on a park in a targeted neighborhood. When he was in Illinois, he was photographed throwing the tear gas into a crowd -- and then admonished by the federal district court for lying multiple times about the events involved. For these stunts, he earned the promotion to Minneapolis and a direct line to ICE Barbie.

He reportedly fervently believes in mass deportations as the mandate of the 2024 election. He didn't get to be the face of the war by accident. He was anointed from on high. He did what they wanted him to do.

Trump thrived on the chaos he created. It justified him in using more force. He didn't -- has never -- wanted to unify the country. He pushed the envelope. The rest was inevitable. He unleashed the forces. It didn't take long.

Good's killing was bad enough. It should have been enough. Pretti's was more than enough.

Minneapolis, as the president says, "maybe it wasn't good here." So, Kristi Noem and her sidekick Corey Lewandowski, along with the press secretary and the communications director and not Stephen Miller, meet for two hours with Trump to discuss the communications strategy for Minneapolis. That's not a meeting about immigration. That's a session on how they're going to spin it.

Bovino gets pulled. Noem is reportedly back in good graces -- or so she says.

But what of his tactics? The war Bovino was waging was not one grounded in warrants for the arrest of the much touted "rapists and murderers" illegally in this country. It was based on round-ups of people of color who are day laborers or work at car washes or live in targeted neighborhoods and go to the grocery store, who can be detained for days or weeks before their papers are sorted out, if they ever are.

Will he pull back the troops and restrain their tactics? Will he limit the war to working with state officials to execute warrants on those convicted of crimes? Will they stop the racial profiling and random roundups? Will they impose limits, as the federal district court in Illinois attempted to do, on the use of tear gas on peaceful protestors? Will they restore the rule of law on the streets of Minneapolis?

And if he won't do those things on his own, will the courts or Congress force him to do them?

Make no mistake. Getting rid of Bovino is the beginning and not the end of what has to happen next.

And then there is the question of who does the investigating? Why would anyone trust the Department of Homeland Security, which has led the way in trashing the victims, to investigate their killing? And why would anyone trust the Justice Department that exercises its discretion based on partisan politics? I can't imagine anyone using the word independent to describe Pam Bondi's Justice Department.

Can state officials effectively investigate wrongdoing by federal agents? Will the courts preserve and protect their access to evidence?

In different times, a bipartisan Congressional committee might act. A Special Counsel? What happens now?

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.