A senior Border Patrol official is retiring weeks after leading a high-profile operation in Minneapolis that made headlines across the country.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief Gregory Bovino is retiring at the end of March after serving roughly three decades in the agency, he first revealed to Breitbart in an interview. His decision marks the latest fallout from Operation Metro Surge, a joint Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minneapolis that began in January and ended after two anti-ICE agitators died while allegedly obstructing enforcement missions.
The Trump administration ultimately ended Bovino’s role in the Minneapolis operation, with him returning to California to serve as a sector chief.
“The greatest honor of my entire life was to work alongside Border Patrol agents on the border and in the interior of the United States in some of the most challenging conditions the agency has ever faced,” Bovino told Breitbart.
“Watching these agents out there giving it their all in some of the most dangerous of environments we have ever faced was humbling,” he continued.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Bovino had become a rising start during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration. The senior CBP official led enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas, serving as an on-the-ground leader of crackdowns that netted the arrest of thousands of illegal migrants living across the country.
However, circumstances changed on Jan. 7 when Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent while purportedly attempting to drive into the agent, causing immense public backlash. The situation became more dire days later when Alex Pretti, an anti-ICE agitator who had already gotten into physical altercations with immigration enforcement, was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents after approaching them with a gun on his person.
Near the end of January, it was announced that the Trump administration would be pulling Bovino out of Minneapolis. Border czar Tom Homan, long considered the architect of the White House’s mass deportation agenda, was later dispatched to the city.
The fallout from Operation Metro Surge also contributed to President Donald Trump Donald Trump’s decision to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from her position. Following Noem’s testimony before Congress — where she spent two days undergoing bipartisan grilling over the botched mission — the president chose to replace her with Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin by the end of March.
The debacle sparked Democrats into demanding major ICE reforms in return for a continuation of funding for other agencies within DHS. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have remained at a stalemate over negotiations, leaving critical agencies like the Transportation Security Administration without funding and incredibly long lines at most major airports.
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