The Briefing:
- Demonstrators rose from their seats and disrupted former Border Patrol "commander-at-large" Greg Bovino mid-speech at a New York Young Republican Club event in Midtown Manhattan on September 17, and were removed before he could finish his remarks.
- The interruption came roughly eight months after Bovino was stripped of his title, following the deaths of two U.S. citizens — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — during a Border Patrol operation he was overseeing in Minneapolis.
- A federal judge separately determined that Bovino had given false testimony about a tear-gas deployment near Chicago, and the Department of Homeland Security opened an inquiry into remarks he reportedly made about a federal prosecutor's religion.
- Since leaving the agency in March, Bovino has accused his former colleagues of losing their nerve on deportations, addressed a far-right gathering in Portugal, and floated a possible run for president in 2028.
The New York Young Republican Club framed Thursday's gathering as a close-knit affair: a keynote on "frontline security efforts and policy," a live question-and-answer session, and a chance to mix with fellow conservatives over drinks, with tickets running $30 for members and $50 for guests. Bovino, billed as the evening's headline speaker, barely got started before demonstrators stood up and began disrupting the room, forcing organizers to pull them out before he could resume, according to photographs taken inside the venue. The scene mirrors the kind of pushback that trailed Bovino through much of his final year in federal uniform.
Bovino spent 2025 as the most visible enforcer of the administration's immigration crackdowns, running operations in Los Angeles, Chicago's Midway Blitz and Minneapolis's Metro Surge. His command over those operations ended abruptly in late January, days after Good and Pretti — both American citizens — were killed during the Minneapolis effort he directed, a fallout Latin Times detailed at the time. Investigators were separately looking into comments he allegedly made about a federal prosecutor's Jewish faith, while a federal judge in Chicago had already concluded months earlier that he misrepresented his own use of tear gas and force against demonstrators. He exited the Border Patrol for good at the end of March, closing out nearly three decades with the agency.
Turning louder once he was out
Losing his command didn't quiet Bovino down — it amplified him. He has since accused his former bosses of going soft, telling interviewers this spring, "there is not mass deportation taking place, unfortunately," and pointing to shifting political winds inside the administration as the reason. He also traveled to Portugal to address a "remigration" summit alongside prominent European far-right figures, and has spent the summer laying the groundwork for a possible 2028 presidential campaign built around harder immigration enforcement.
More confrontations likely ahead
Thursday's disruption probably won't be Bovino's last. He has kept a steady circuit of interviews, conferences and now club speaking slots since leaving federal service, positioning himself to the right of the administration he once served. Each appearance draws two crowds at once — supporters treating him as a rising political figure, and critics who see him as emblematic of the crackdown's human toll. Neither NYYRC nor Bovino had commented publicly on Thursday's interruption as of publication.
