Border Patrol Chief Relieved of Command Same Day He Testified Before Congress, Raising Retaliation Concerns: House GOP

Migrants use a rope ladder to illegally climb over the U.S. border wall separating the United States from Mexico in El Centro, Calif. on Oct. 6, 2022. Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images

House Republican leaders have raised the prospect that a Border Patrol chief was the target of retaliation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief after the Border Patrol official sat for a transcribed interview with Congress.

Gregory K. Bovino, the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Border Patrol sector in California’s imperial valley, offered a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee on July 12, 2023. According to Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), within hours of finishing his testimony, Mr. Bovino was informed that he had been relieved of his command at the El Centro sector and “reassigned to a vague, indefinite, and temporary headquarters assignment.”