Before the tear gas, before the courtroom findings, before the retirement announcement — there was a phone call. On January 12, Gregory Bovino dialed into a meeting meant to line up federal prosecutors behind his immigration operation in Minnesota. What happened on that call, and a separate fight already playing out in a Chicago courtroom, are now at the center of two misconduct threads that Customs and Border Protection was actively investigating right up until the day the agency's most visible field commander walked away.
Internal documents examined by CBS News show CBP notified Bovino by email on March 2 that it was opening a formal inquiry into misconduct allegations against him. Sixteen days later, he submitted paperwork to retire and relocate. The records, pried loose through a Freedom of Information Act request first reported by the Chicago Tribune, spell out in writing exactly what investigators wanted him to answer for — far more specific than the vague statements CBP gave publicly at the time.
A Sidelined Commander, Before the Paperwork Even Started
By the time that January call happened, Bovino's grip on the national stage had already loosened. He'd been pulled from leading the Minnesota surge in late January, after federal officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, within weeks of each other — killings that set off protests and put Homeland Security on the defensive over its use-of-force record. Bovino, offering no proof, publicly floated at the time that Pretti had meant to attack agents before he was killed.
The Phone Call: A Prosecutor's Faith Becomes a Punchline
It was against that backdrop that the January 12 call took place. Minnesota's top federal prosecutor, Daniel Rosen — who observes Shabbat and is part of the Orthodox community — sent a deputy in his place because the meeting fell during his day of rest. According to CBS's review of the investigative file, Bovino grew audibly irritated that Rosen wasn't available and, in the course of complaining, used the phrase "chosen people" in a way investigators read as mocking Rosen's faith. CBP's written questions to Bovino go further, asking him to confirm or deny one exact line: "Do Orthodox criminals also take off Saturday?"
The agency framed its questions around two numbered rules from its internal conduct manual — Sections 7.7.2 and 7.7.11 — covering professional treatment of coworkers and the public, plus a ban on language showing contempt for someone's faith, race or national origin. Notably, it was congressional pressure that got this part of the review started in the first place: a lawmaker had flagged the alleged remarks to DHS before CBP formally opened its file, based on reporting from wire services at the time.
A Different Complaint, Rooted in a Chicago Courtroom
The second thread predates the phone call by months, and Rosen plays no part in it at all. Instead, it runs through U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis's courtroom in Chicago, where she spent weeks weighing a lawsuit over how Bovino's agents policed protests during Operation Midway Blitz. Ellis eventually ruled that Bovino's own sworn testimony couldn't be trusted, and CBP's investigators wanted to know what he thought that finding meant for his future as a witness: would prosecutors have to disclose Ellis's credibility ruling to defense lawyers in any criminal case where Bovino testified?
Lawyers have a name for the problem this creates: being "Giglio impaired," a designation rooted in Supreme Court precedent that flags officers whose credibility has been called into question in ways that could unravel cases relying on their word. For a nearly-thirty-year veteran of building enforcement cases, that kind of designation doesn't fade once an operation wraps up.
What Actually Happened in Little Village
Ellis's skepticism wasn't abstract. It grew out of an October night in Little Village, a heavily Mexican section of Chicago, when Bovino's agents fired tear gas into a crowd. Bovino's original explanation was that a rock had cracked against his helmet moments before he threw the canister; under cross-examination, that story fell apart twice, and he ultimately admitted nothing had struck him before the gas went off. Ellis didn't mince words about what that meant, writing that his account amounted to "outright lying" — not an isolated exaggeration, in her view, but a pattern CBP's own investigators are now scrutinizing on paper.
Weeks after CBP opened its file, a divided Seventh Circuit panel threw out Ellis's injunction limiting how agents could use force during the operation, splitting 2-1 in the government's favor. Bovino has pointed to that outcome as proof he was cleared. But the appellate judges never revisited Ellis's finding that he lied — their ruling turned on whether her order was too sweeping and how the underlying case got dismissed, a narrower legal question that left her credibility finding untouched.
Bovino's Account: A Setup, Not a Resignation
Bovino rejects the idea that he left on his own terms. Speaking to CBS, he described being "forced to retire" and pointed a finger at CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, whom he accuses of steering internal affairs against him for personal reasons rather than any real wrongdoing. In his telling, both inquiries trace back to political fallout from the botched Minnesota operation. He's also claimed, in remarks to the Tribune, that an earlier round of internal review had already sided with him before Scott routed the matter elsewhere, and that he didn't grasp how far the investigation had gone until a journalist rang him up for comment.
For its part, CBP has stuck to a narrow script. A spokesperson confirmed to CBS that the agency stays quiet on personnel questions once someone is gone, and rejected Bovino's claim that pulling his security detail was retaliatory, pointing out that former staff simply aren't entitled to protection funded by the agency. Left unaddressed: the specific conduct-code violations investigators asked him about in writing, and whether the congressional complaint about the Rosen call triggered any additional scrutiny.
Retired, But Not Quiet
Bovino hasn't stepped back from the spotlight since leaving. He's continued taking public shots at how the administration is running its deportation push, casting the officials who eased him out as having gone soft — an unusual position for a retired commander to hold while written questions about his own honesty and conduct remain officially unresolved.
Nothing in the released paperwork shows whether either inquiry ever reached a formal conclusion before Bovino's last day, and the agency has declined to say. It's a striking loose end for a case that drew this much attention: a career spanning nearly three decades ending with written questions about honesty on the record, and no public accounting of how — or whether — CBP ever answered them. For residents of Little Village and the surrounding neighborhoods pulled into the operation, that silence signals something simple: the full reckoning over how Midway Blitz was carried out hasn't closed, no matter who was giving the orders when it happened.
