Daniel Wolfram
Trump’s former Border Patrol commander claims the administration wants to silence him. He also claims that there are 100 million illegal immigrants in the country.
After a winter of ICE running rampant in Minnesota, the administration’s push for a severe crackdown on illegal immigration has taken a backseat as the midterm election is on the horizon.
The restructuring also comes after the bombastic former Border Patrol chief was forced to retire when several Americans were executed by his agency.
He has since fallen out of favor with the Trump administration. In turn, he now claims that they want to see him dead.
According to Bovino, they want to silence him
Trump’s former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino went on former Fox News host and ultra-controversial political commentator Tucker Carlson’s podcast The Tucker Carlson Show. Here he made several wild claims.
One of them is that Bovino believes that the Trump administration wants to see him dead. He claims that there have been several threats on his life, seemingly ordered by people deep inside the White House administration.
“You know, the minute I get — the minute I left, security detail gets pulled. I’m at one of the highest, if not the highest threats in DHS, death threats. I mean, you name it, man, they’re coming.” A perplexed Carlson had to ask Bovino to clarify if he was hearing correctly that he thought he was going to get killed.
“Do I think they want me dead at this point? Yes. I’m in a running battle every time I go out. I mean, every time.”
“Absurd” claims
Bovino went on to specify who was, and who was not, out to get him in the administration. “I think Rodney Scott (Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection), he’s the one that took my security detail away with Homan there. Yeah, absolutely. You bet.”
However, he was quick to stress that Trump have no involvement in wanting him dead.
“I don’t think Trump would. I think if Trump knew what they had done and what they would do to Border Patrol agents or ICE officers or anyone that disagrees with them, I think he would have an absolute panic attack or a heart attack over something like that.”
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis called the claims from Greg Bovino “absurd” and said that Tom Homan, the current Border Patrol commander, is an “American patriot and career law enforcement officer with decades of experience effectively protecting American communities and deporting illegal aliens.”
An erroneous claim of epic proportions
That was not the only bombshell uttered during Tucker’s interview with Bovino. He also claims that there are over 100 million illegal immigrants in the United States at this very moment.
“I’ve got the number at 107 million illegal aliens currently residing with impunity, I might add, in the United States today.”
That would mean that Greg Bovino asserts that one in every four people living in the US right now is an illegal immigrant. That would be one of the most extreme miscalculations of all time.
For context, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a right-wing organization that is credibly accused of being a hate group with ties to white supremacists, estimated in March of 2025 that there were currently around 18.6 million illegal immigrants in the United States. That number is in itself a disproportionately inflated number, but Bovino’s claim is even wilder.
Tucker Carlson did not seem to push back during the interview. In fact, he seemed to agree with and believe the inflated number and took Bovino at his word since he once ran the Border Patrol before getting mercilessly fired by Trump.
