Lights… Camera… Action!
Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino has become the star of his own continuing block bluster movie.
He is liable to suddenly appear wherever there are cameras, terrorizing immigrants at one moment in California, at another in Illinois, and this week in his home state of North Carolina.
A 55-year-old self-imagined action figure from the little Appalachian town of Blowing Rock, Bovino plays the lead in an ongoing production of a made-from-social-media movie that can be called Top Goon. He is fit and has a military haircut that might make him look more battle-ready were it not for the apparent spike-inducing gel and dye to vanquish the gray.
He is invariably costumed in a green Border Patrol uniform, complete with body armor, sometimes complemented by a special forces style helmet. His podunk roots do not keep him from making dramatic declarations such as “it’s our f—ing city!” in a major metropolis.
The featured actors in Top Goon include the man who is the mega star around whom all others in the MAGA firmament orbit. President Donald Trump’s false narrative about an invading horde of vicious criminals with “bad genes” that are “poisoning the blood of our country” is what drives the overall action.
There is also Bovino’s direct report, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem. She has plenty of experience costuming herself to fit different roles.
And then there is Trump’s MAGA-Me, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who is demanding 3,000 arrests a day.
The supporting cast includes 20,000-and-counting Border Patrol Agents, in uniform, often wearing masks that make clear who they really are. Helmets and weapons meant for the battlefield add to the overall effect of warfighters in search of a war.
Bovino strives to cast as extras an invading horde of “the worst of the worst,” the violent criminals who are the ostensible reason for the mass deportations. The plot twist? They take more effort to catch than the thousands of undocumented immigrants with low-paying jobs and no criminal records.
But Bovino is ready and willing to round up even U.S. citizens who happen to get caught up in his dragnets. These extra extras include day laborers at Home Depot, car washes, construction sites, and landscaping jobs. Along with big arrest numbers, Bovino is providing the kind of drama that MAGA loves.
As for the backstory of Top Goon, Bovino seems to have made no public mention that he appears to be the great-grandson of Michele Bovino, who sold his vineyard in Aprigliano, Calabria, to join the four million Italians who emigrated from Italy to America between 1880 and 1920. Italians were widely viewed as the worst of their time. A lynch mob of 10,000 stormed the New Orleans jail in 1891 and hung 11 Italians who had been falsely accused of killing the city’s police chief.
But Bovino did speak in a recent podcast of his great uncle, Neil Hartley, who left their hometown of Blowing Rock for Yale, Broadway, and then Hollywood. Hartley, who his great nephew called “Uncle Neil” even though they never actually met, produced The Border. The movie features Jack Nicholson as a Border Patrol agent who is nearly swept up in corruption, but saves himself by taking a stand for an undocumented young mother and her kidnapped newborn because “I want to feel good about something.”
Bovino told The Daily podcast, “I believe I was approximately eight, nine years old. And my parents took me to see that movie because Uncle Neil produced it. It was a big deal from back in rural North Carolina to see something like that. So we went and watched it. It got me interested in the Border Patrol from an early age.”
In fact, The Border was released in February of 1982, the year Bovino turned 12. And, if the parents were in the theater, his father would have been freshly released from state prison after being sentenced to 18 months for the drunk-driving death of a 26-year-old woman who had gone out with her husband to buy donuts. Mike Bovino admitted to drinking “two, maybe three” six packs of beer before driving the wrong way down a highway. Mike Bovino’s vehicle was uninsured due to a 1974 DUI conviction.
The mother, whose family is said to have been in Blowing Rock for eight generations, divorced the father and married a local magistrate judge. Greg signed on with the Border Patrol and worked his way up in the ranks to where he supervised the El Centro sector of the California/Mexico border. Production of Top Goon was about to commence.
Top Goon opens on July 4, 2023, with a dramatic video Bovino posted on X of a uniformed figure on horseback. The rider—perhaps Bovino himself— was flying the American flag at full gallop along the southern border.
”Red, white & blue isn’t a fashion statement; to us, it’s #freedom,” the accompanying message reads. “As we are bbq’ing & lighting #fireworks, let’s remember the values that make our country the best country in the world. Have a safe & happy #FourthofJuly from the El Centro Sector!”
Being a star in the making, Bovino did not wait for orders from Noem or anybody else to set in motion the main story of his online contemporaneous biopic.
The day after Trump was certified as the official victor of the 2024 election, Bovino proved himself a MAGA man by launching what he dubbed “Operation Return to Sender.” He did not await orders from Noem or anybody else before leading 60 agents 300 miles north of his assigned domain on the border.
Over the next three days, Bovino’s agents arrested 78 people, largely agricultural workers. Former Biden administration officials complained that Bovino has “gone rogue.” The Trump administration responded by making him chief-at-large, overseeing operations in all of California.
For his first big action scene, Bovino chose MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where hundreds of movie and TV episodes have been filmed. He made it one more on July 7 with a sweep that included a Blackhawk helicopter, military armored vehicles and National Guard troops. There were also, of course, Border Patrol agents, some on horses fitted with protective face shields and body armor like their riders.
But the drug dealers, violent criminals, and undocumented migrants who supposedly “infested” the park were nowhere to be seen. There were no arrests. The sweep only managed to disrupt a city-sponsored summer day camp.
When National Guard Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman questioned the wisdom of the show of force, Bovino questioned Sherman’s patriotism. Bovino informed reporters that President Trump telephoned him to praise the effort in California.
“The president called into the entire team that was assembled just to say, ‘Thank you, and you’re doing a good job in Los Angeles,’” Bovino told them.
Then Top Goon moved on to Chicago.
On Sept. 3, Bovino used a Blackhawk again for his most dramatic action scene yet. He kicked off what he dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz” with a made-for-video late-night raid on an apartment complex in the Windy City. Agents rappelled from a hovering helicopter onto the roof. Snipers trained their laser sights on innocent residents. Agents clad like special forces operators kicked in doors and tossed in flashbangs. Children were among those rousted from their beds and zip-tied together. They were escorted outside, where they were separated by race and herded into waiting vehicles.
The complex was supposedly occupied by the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang. Agents checked everyone for tattoos, even though TdA does not use them to signify membership. Only one of the 37 people arrested was said to be a verified member. Given the feds’ past mistakes in this regard, even that was questionable.
Prosecutors did not charge any of those arrested, but there was no denying the fear-inducing power of the images.
Noem made a cameo to join Bovino in staging an Oct. 5 photo op on the roof of the Broadview ICE Facility in suburban Chicago. They gazed down to see only a handful of disappointingly peaceful protesters.
The next day, Bovino sought to amp up the drama by posting an unrelated perp photo. A forlorn man named Columbino Ramos was paraded before a camera by two burly federal agents who had their backs turned. Ramos was wearing black socks with the letters “USA” in white.
There was a hitch that might have elicited an apology from a conscience-stricken Border Patrol agent such as the one portrayed by Nicholson in The Border.
The actual suspect in the ride-share rape described by Bovino was named Alexander Ramos. He was arrested in August and is still being held without bail in the Cook County jail. The supposed “Exhibit A,” Columbino Ramos, appears to have had no criminal record until Bovino’s agents detained him for being an undocumented immigrant.
Bovino and his agents were quick to use tear gas, as their counterparts did in The Border, against detained migrants who became disorderly. The repeated gassings in Chicago prompted a supporting actor, federal Judge Sara Ellis, to take action. She issued a temporary restraining order on Oct. 9 barring federal agents from using chemical crowd control agents unless they faced a serious threat.
Bovino and his agents essentially ignored the order and continued to use tear gas on Oct. 14. One dramatic image is of a couple who had been stuck in traffic fleeing a cloud of gas on foot with their baby still in a car seat. An additional tear-gas canister can be seen arcing in the air behind them. Bovino did not post these images; a witness did.
Other images showed Bovino’s agents using tear gas on the morning of Oct. 25, minutes before the scheduled start of a children’s Halloween parade on the same street. The scariest figures were not the costumed goblins and monsters, but the real-life masked agents who chase down and handcuff a construction worker. They also knocked down a woman on a bicycle and piled up on a 67-year-old jogger returning from training for a marathon, who reportedly suffered several broken ribs.
Local residents blew whistles and voiced objections. The agents responded with tear gas that wafted toward the playground. The parade was canceled, making it the second kids’ event Bovino disrupted.
At 9 a.m. on Oct. 27, Bovino reported to federal court to explain to Judge Ellis his use of force. He arrived surrounded by four agents who were all a head taller than him, showing he is as short as a number of actual movie stars who only appear to be larger than life.
The judge seemed most disturbed by the Halloween children’s parade.
“Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” Ellis told Bovino. “They just don’t. And you can’t use riot control weapons against them.”
In seeking to justify deploying tear gas, Bovino said he had been hit in the head by a rock. But, as the federal judge noted, “Video evidence ultimately disproved this.”
“Defendant Bovino admitted that he lied.”
The closest to rock throwing was a clip of Bovino and some of his agents taking a moment during a sweep to play rock, paper, scissors.
On Oct. 28, Noem served as executive producer, posting a made-for-social media video that confirmed Bovino’s status as a mega MAGA star.
DHS also posted a movie poster modeled after the one for the cartel action flick Sicario.
“CICERO,” it reads in outsized letters as if it were a movie title.
President Trump and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyon are featured, along with Noem in full “ICE Barbie” attire. A rugged-looking Bovino holds long gun, ready for action as always.
Meanwhile, Bovino’s production of Top Goon moved on to his home state. The primary target was Charlotte, where more than 150,000 of its 900,000 residents are as foreign-born as Bovino’s grandfather.
On Saturday, video showed Vincenzo Bovino’s grandson striding across a shopping plaza’s parking lot. They soon after grabbed an Hispanic teen.
“I think he was grocery shopping,” a bystander called out.
“Criminals grocery shop,” Bovino replied. “They got to eat, too.”
In another part of the city, a gray unmarked minivan pulled up to where Army vet Reba Hamilton was having coffee on her front step. She was watching two Hispanic men she hired stringing Christmas lights on a tree in her front yard when a pair of uniformed Border Patrol agents stepped out.
“Armed, with all their gear,” Hamilton later recalled. “I had my safety weapon, [my] phone. I started recording.”
Hamilton figured the agents were “looking for brown people, easy pickings.”
“And they thought the two chubby guys, one of them on a ladder, was the easiest job they could find,” she added.
The prospect of being filmed as grinches with guns must have made it seem not so easy after all, as the agents returned to their vehicle.
Hamilton told the two Hispanic men to get going, promising to get their ladders to them another time. She later summed up the encounter as she saw it.
“Two brown men in my yard trying to make a living with Christmas lights,” she told the Daily Beast. “Clearly, they are the worst of the worst, and clearly they are the dangerous desperadoes that they’re portrayed to be.”
She posted her video online. The world is now so small that the Hispanic men returned to their present home to learn the footage had already reached relatives in their country of origin.
The video was also shown on Fox News as the star of Top Goon made another appearance.
“They ask Bovino what he thought, and of course, his response was, ‘We don’t know what their criminal background is… blah, blah, blah, a whole bunch of c—,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton, a former police dispatcher, said, “I love cops. These guys aren’t cops. These guys are something else. They are missing some basic human component.”
Bovino posted photos on X of several undocumented immigrants from the Charlotte sweep who had criminal records. A small number had been convicted of violent crimes, but with a little actual police work by actual cops, they could have been tracked down without trampling on civil rights and terrorizing entire communities. The most common offense seems to have been drunk driving. One had a rap sheet as bad as Bovino’s father, only without the woman killed while going for donuts.
“With two DUI arrests already on his record, this illegal alien from Honduras had demonstrated a pattern of endangering the community,” the post by Mike Bovino’s son read.
The star of Top Goon is moving next to New Orleans for “Operation Swamp Sweep.”
The Bovino franchise has a new location but the same theme: An unending horror movie.
The post Opinion: How Trump’s Movie-Mad Top Goon Is Star of His Own Horror Show appeared first on The Daily Beast.
