Trump’s Ex-Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Declares He Wants to Deport Nearly One-Third of the People in the U.S.

AP Photo/Tom Baker

Gregory Bovino, who previously served as Border Patrol Commander in President Donald Trump’s administration, responded to reports he was considering running for president with a declaration about his preferred immigration policies that included some mathematically ludicrous figures.

Bovino’s tenure as Border Patrol commander occurred during a period of growing backlash to Trump’s immigration crackdown, sparking nationwide protests and multiple court challenges, especially after two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Good on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. Polling shows public opinion has significantly soured on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, even among Republicans.

The controversy ultimately led to the ouster of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) taking her place; DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin exited the month prior. Bovino himself was defenestrated from his position in January shortly after the shootings of Pretti and Good, reassigned out of Minneapolis, and then his “retirement” was announced.

On Monday, NewsNation reported that Bovino was considering running for president in 2028, including on-the-record quotes from him and a “Bovino 2028” website he had launched — and the slogan “Men Fight Back.”

Later Monday afternoon, Bovino shared the NewsNation report on X, along with a lengthy tweet of his own declaring the kind of immigration policies he would support.

Wrote Bovino:

NewsNation is reporting I’m exploring a run for President in 2028.

Here’s the truth: My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here. That’s it.

The grassroots support I’m seeing tells me the polls are completely wrong…

If I’m getting this much energy, it’s probably because 90% of the country wants mass deportations and the media just isn’t asking the right questions.

My commitment is simple, liberate America from this invasion and restore our quality of life.

If running for President is what it takes to actually get it done, then all options are on the table.

House Bovino.

Men fight back.
http://Bovino2028.com

His claim that he is getting so much “energy” because “90% of the country wants mass deportations” is not supported by any real polling numbers. Bovino said that was because the “grassroots support” he was getting “tells me the polls are completely wrong,” but even Republicans do not poll that extreme on immigration issues.

A Pew Research Center poll taken April 6 to 12 found that 52% of U.S. adults said that the Trump administration is doing too much to deport immigrants who are living in the country illegally. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 19% said the administration was doing too much. The poll included 3,592 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of +/-1.9 percentage points.

Screenshot via Pew Research Center.

In other words, nearly 20% of Republicans think the Trump administration’s current deportation policies are going too far — and Bovino is proposing something much more extreme.

“My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here,” wrote Bovino.

This “106 million illegals” number is not based on reality. Similar claims have been made by Trump, other administration officials, and MAGA social media users in recent years, but draw from false information or erroneously conflate categories. An NBC News report last year analyzed such claims and found that they were including “55 million visa holders,” which includes tourist visas and many people who are currently not physically in the U.S.

The true number of illegal immigrants peaked at 14 million in 2023, according to Pew, and has declined somewhat since then. The data published by DHS on the department’s website shows the illegal immigrant population hovering around 11 million through 2022; the numbers did not multiply by nearly 10 times in the past four years.

According to Pew, the total number of all immigrants in the U.S. — including those here legally — was 51.9 million as of June 2025, or 15.4% of all U.S. residents. This number represented a decline over the first several months of Trump’s second term.

The total population of the U.S. was 331,449,281 as of the 2020 Census. The agency’s 2025 estimate was a population of 341,784,857.

Bovino’s declared desire to deport “106 million” people is completely impossible without including tens of millions of U.S. citizens. Several commentators have previously reacted to such claims by noting that the nonwhite population of the U.S. is about 100 million.

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