Minnesota Prosecutors Open Criminal Investigation into Border Patrol Chief Bovino Over ICE Operation Abuses

On March 3, 2026, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced the opening of criminal investigations into Gregory Bovino, former Customs and Border Protection chief patrol agent and Border Patrol commander-at-large, and multiple ICE agents for alleged unlawful conduct during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Moriarty’s office launched the Transparency and Accountability Project (TAP), a structured investigation gathering community evidence of 17 distinct incidents involving alleged unlawful behavior by federal agents during the operation.

Operation Metro Surge was a large-scale immigration enforcement operation launched in December 2025 under Bovino’s command in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The operation became nationally controversial in January 2026 when federal agents killed two individuals, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, during enforcement actions — deaths that sparked protests and calls for accountability. Investigators are examining Bovino’s January 21, 2026 deployment of a chemical agent into a crowd of protesters near Mueller Park as a potential criminal offense.

Bovino had previously been the subject of judicial criticism: in a federal court case arising from the Chicago immigration operations that preceded Operation Metro Surge, Judge Sara Ellis, in a 233-page opinion dated November 20, 2025 (ECF 281, Chicago Headline Club v. Noem), found that Bovino’s testimony was “not credible.” She wrote that he “appeared evasive over the three days of his deposition, either providing ‘cute’ responses to Plaintiffs’ counsel’s questions or outright lying,” and that he admitted in his deposition that he lied multiple times about the events that prompted him to throw tear gas. The same opinion said the agents’ description of neighbours and others as “professional agitators” undermined their credibility. The Seventh Circuit later vacated the injunction that rested on the opinion without reviewing the credibility finding; see 2026-03-05–seventh-circuit-vacates-ellis-injunction-chicago-headline-club.

Following the killings of Pretti and Good and the resulting public backlash, the Trump administration removed Bovino from his command of the Minneapolis operation and reassigned him to his previous position as chief patrol agent in El Centro, California — a reassignment critics characterized as a lateral transfer protecting a favored official from accountability rather than discipline. White House border czar Tom Homan assumed personal oversight of the operation’s final phase.

The Minnesota criminal investigation marks the first state-level attempt to hold federal immigration enforcement officers criminally accountable for conduct during the Trump administration’s mass enforcement operations — a constitutional confrontation over whether state law applies to federal officers conducting immigration enforcement on state soil.