'Gestapo' ex-Border Patrol boss collides with Trump by launching his own White House bid

The man California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called "Gestapo Greg" is now gunning for the White House — and he's ready to take on whoever President Donald Trump has in mind as his successor.

Gregory Bovino, the firebrand former Border Patrol commander-at-large who became the face of Trump's brutal immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, has launched an exploratory committee for a 2028 presidential bid, NewsNation confirmed Monday. The move puts him on a direct collision course with Trump, who has publicly backed a Vance-Rubio ticket as his preferred succession plan.

"If I were President, I'd lead that [deportation] effort from the front and be on the front lines from time to time," Bovino said in a statement first reported by the Daily Beast — a barely veiled shot at Trump, whom he has accused of going soft on immigration.

The bid comes loaded with baggage. Bovino was ousted in January after federal agents under his command fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. He was widely photographed in a long dark coat that Newsom, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, described as looking like Bovino "literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb." When Bovino was subsequently removed from his post, Newsom wrote on X: "Gestapo Greg is out. Keep the pressure up. It's working."

More recently, Bovino attended a far-right "Remigration Summit" in Portugal, where he was photographed alongside the event's organizer — a man who invoked the Weimar Republic as a model for mass deportation policy.

His own party isn't impressed. When asked about Bovino's criticisms of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin delivered a withering dismissal: "I never met the guy. He's irrelevant to me. I don't know who he is."

Bovino's campaign website, Bovino2028.com, carries the slogan "House Bovino — Men Fight Back" and refers to immigrants as "foreign hordes."