The Trump administration is removing Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino from Minnesota after border agents beat and fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, Saturday morning. Bovino had claimed Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement,” but eyewitness video directly contradicted the claim. Pretti was attacked by agents as he attempted to help a woman who had been violently shoved by officers.
Greg Bovino has led Trump’s paramilitary-style immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Chicago and other cities. The Atlantic magazine reports Bovino will return to his previous job as chief patrol agent in El Centro, California, and that he may soon retire.
On Monday night, protesters gathered outside a Minnesota hotel where Bovino was believed to be staying.
Protester: “Getting fired is not justice. It’s not enough. Their man needs to be brought to trial for what he’s wrought on Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota.”
The shooting of Alex Pretti has sparked bipartisan outrage across the country and has forced the White House to reassess its operations in Minnesota. On Monday, the White House announced border czar Tom Homan would head to Minnesota. Homan is a longtime immigration hard-liner who was an architect of Trump’s first-term family separation policy. In September, House Democrats began investigating Homan amid revelations he was recorded in 2024 accepting a Cava bag containing $50,000 in cash from a pair of FBI agents who were posing as business executives.
On Monday, President Trump held calls with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Trump said he and Walz “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” Walz talked to Minnesota Public Radio after the call.
Gov. Tim Walz: “First of all, I asked that we have a fair and independent investigation into the murder of both Renee Good and Alex and that we have to be able to do that. And he said, ’We’ll look at that. We’ll take a look at that.’ And I said, ‘We just have to reduce these numbers.’ We started out with that. And he pledged that, ‘Look, I’m going to send Tom Homan in. We’ll do things differently.’”
On Monday, Trump also held a two-hour meeting at the White House with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who had called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” shortly after he was fatally shot. One hundred forty Democratic lawmakers are calling for Noem to be impeached.
In legal news, the Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has sided with the Trump administration and blocked a lower court order that would have prevented officers from arresting, detaining, pepper-spraying or retaliating against protesters in Minneapolis without probable cause.
In a separate legal case, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was in court Monday seeking to halt the immigration crackdown known as Operation Metro Surge. The judge did not issue a decision on Monday. We will speak to Keith Ellison after headlines.
This all comes as protests continue in Minnesota over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Students at the University of Minnesota walked out of classes on Monday.
Protester: “I’m really angry. I’m angry, and I’m sad, like all of the time. I’m a university student. I can’t focus on my classes. I have a lot of friends who are really scared to go outside right now, you know, regardless of their citizenship status. Like, people are really afraid, and they have a right to be, you know? Just on our campus, we have ICE agents staying just a few streets away here in Cedar-Riverside, in the neighborhood nearing ours. They’ve faced so much brutality and violence the past couple of weeks.”
