Border patrol commander to leave Minneapolis after shooting of Alex Pretti | Minneapolis

Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander who has become the public face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is being swapped out for the border czar, Tom Homan, as the Trump administration reshuffles the leadership of its immigration enforcement operation in the city and scales back its federal presence there after a second fatal shooting by officers.

The move comes nearly immediately after Bovino went on a Sunday cable news show and said that border patrol officials were the real victims following the shooting death of nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents.

A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that the 55-year-old, who has been a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists, would be leaving Minnesota along with some of the agents deployed with him.

A different person familiar with the matter said Bovino had been stripped of his specially created title of “commander at large” of the border patrol and would return to his former job as a chief patrol agent along California’s El Centro sector of the US-Mexico border.

Donald Trump announced on Monday that he was sending Tom Homan to Minnesota to oversee operations on the ground there – nicknamed Operation Metro Surge – reporting directly to the president.

But Homan’s entrance doesn’t spell the end of ICE’s troubles. Minnesota’s top federal judge has now summoned its acting head, Todd Lyons, to appear in court on Friday for allegedly defying court orders that may lead to the ICE lead being held in contempt, saying: “The court’s patience is at an end.”

Bovino’s departure comes amid a sharp shift in strategy from the White House after the fatal shooting of Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse. On Monday, Trump said he had held conciliatory calls with the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey – Democrats he had previously blamed for the turmoil that escalated into two killings of US citizens by federal agents.

News of Bovino’s departure did not stop dozens of protesters from gathering outside a hotel where they believed Bovino was staying. They blew whistles and banged pots, and one person blasted a trombone. Police watched and kept them away from the hotel entrance.

During a White House press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also struck a conciliatory tone, calling Pretti’s death a “tragedy” and appearing to walk back previous comments from the White House adviser Stephen Miller calling Pretti a “would-be assassin”. Trump said earlier on Monday that his administration was reviewing the shooting of Pretti by a federal officer.

Pretti’s killing has also incensed Joe Biden, who along with calling for a full investigation into the shootings of Pretti and Renee Good, took jabs at Trump, albeit days after many other Democrats.

“Minnesotans have reminded us all what it is to be American, and they have suffered enough at the hands of this Administration,” Biden posted on social media. “Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.”

Pretti’s union, AFGE Local 3669, which represents employees at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs medical center where he worked, said it was “disgusted by the abhorrent rhetoric of Trump administration officials following his killing. Alex was a son, a colleague, and a fellow union brother, not an ‘assassin’ or a ‘domestic terrorist’. We are especially disappointed with VA secretary Doug Collins, who chose to use the murder of his own employee to push partisan, political narratives.” It called for a “full, transparent, independent third-party investigation” into the killing.

Trump and Walz – an otherwise regular target of the president’s ire and ridicule – said they discussed the federal immigration surge in a call the president later described as “very good”.

“We, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Walz’s office issued a statement that hinted at signs of a future de-escalation of the situation. It said the governor and the president had held a “productive” call in which Trump had “agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals”.

Later on Monday, Trump said that he also had had a “very good telephone conversation” with Frey, who has been sharply critical of the administration’s deployment. In a statement, Frey said he had conveyed to Trump that the current deployment “needs to end”.

“The president agreed that the present situation cannot continue,” Frey said. “Some federal agents will begin leaving the area tomorrow, and I will continue pushing for the rest involved in this operation to go.”

Amid the White House shift, Melania Trump called for “unity” in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning. “I know my husband, the president, had a great call yesterday with the governor and the mayor, and they’re working together to make it peaceful and without riots,” she said. “I’m against the violence, so please, if you protest, protest in peace.”

The protests have been almost uniformly peaceful. The exception has been the actions of federal agents, who have fired teargas, physically restrained protesters and killed two people.

Bovino has been one of the most aggressive promoters of Trump’s deportation campaign, trumpeting the operations in highly produced videos meant to resemble action films. Often, Bovino, a swaggering presence recognisable by his closely cropped hair, is the only unmasked face, surrounded by a team of agents wearing black neck gaiters and facial coverings. He recently appeared in the Minneapolis snow wearing an army green greatcoat, which invited comparisons to the Gestapo.

According to the Atlantic, Bovino will return to El Centro, California, where he previously served as chief patrol agent of the sector. Bovino, through constant appearances on conservative media, his aggressive “turn and burn” tactics, and vocal support for Trump’s deportation agenda, parlayed his regional role into a national one, leading the administration’s city-by-city crackdown.

CNN reported on Monday that the Department of Homeland Security had suspended Bovino’s access to his social media accounts.

Bovino had aggressively defended his agents, despite video footage contradicting his claims, after the fatal shooting of Good earlier this month and Pretti at the weekend.

“This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” Bovino said after Pretti’s killing. Video showed that Pretti had been holding a phone, not a gun, and that agents had disarmed him of a legally owned gun he had not been holding in his hand before killing him.

Last year, Bovino was reprimanded by a federal judge for lying to the court.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting