Bovino Was Under Misconduct Probe Before Retiring From Chicago Immigration Operation, Emails Show

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who ran Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, was under an internal misconduct investigation when he announced his retirement in late March, according to a batch of U.S. Customs and Border Protection emails released under a federal court order.

The emails, made public this week, show an internal CBP investigator wrote to Bovino on March 2 notifying him that the agency was "conducting an official Inquiry into allegations of misconduct reported to CBP." The email instructed Bovino to answer a list of questions "fully and truthfully." Sixteen days later, Bovino announced he was retiring.

The questions sent to Bovino centered on two sets of allegations: that he lacked credibility in testimony he gave during a Chicago federal court case, and that he made an antisemitic remark to a prosecutor in Minnesota.

Bovino told ABC7's I-Team he was "forced to leave." In a statement his attorney provided, Bovino said the investigation was politically motivated and "weaponized" against him. The statement said Bovino "had enough experience to know he wouldn't get a fair shake, a fact driven home by legal counsel who advised him to retire immediately."

In a separate text response to the I-Team, Bovino denied any wrongdoing and argued that the country should be rallying support for mass deportations ahead of the midterms rather than pursuing him.

Bovino became the public face of Operation Midway Blitz, the immigration enforcement surge that brought Border Patrol agents into Chicago neighborhoods last fall. Residents and elected officials accused agents under his command of using excessive force during arrests and protests.

Those accusations formed the basis of a federal use-of-force lawsuit filed in Chicago last November. During a deposition in that case, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis found Bovino's testimony unreliable. In a court order, Ellis wrote that Bovino was "evasive over the three days of his deposition, either providing 'cute' responses to Plaintiff's counsel's questions or outright lying."

One exchange cited by Ellis involved video of agents firing pepper balls at a reverend protesting outside the Broadview ICE detention center. An attorney asked Bovino if he could "look me in the eye and acknowledge that the use of force applied against Reverend Black" was "unacceptable and inappropriate and should not have happened." Bovino answered, "I can tell you that I don't know what the use of force was here, and I can't make a judgment either way because I don't know."

Ellis wrote that when shown video of agents hitting Reverend Black with pepper balls, Bovino denied seeing a projectile strike him in the head. Ellis also pointed to Bovino's denials involving a man he tackled outside the Broadview facility, and to cellphone video from Little Village that showed Bovino throwing a tear gas canister into a crowd of protesters. According to Ellis, Bovino "admitted...that he lied multiple times about the events that occurred in Little Village that prompted him to throw tear gas at protesters."

Despite those findings, Bovino has continued to defend the conduct of agents under his command. In a deposition given November 4, he said, "I believe that all uses of force that I've seen, and all arrests that I've seen, have been more than exemplary."

The newly released emails show that Bovino announced his retirement while the misconduct inquiry was still open. At the time, his departure was described as voluntary and unconnected to the pending litigation. CBP has not released the outcome of the internal inquiry or said whether it was completed before Bovino left the agency.

The use-of-force lawsuit that produced Judge Ellis's findings remains active in federal court in Chicago. The release of the CBP emails followed a court order compelling the government to turn them over. It is not clear whether additional records from the investigation will be made public as the case proceeds.