Ex-Border Patrol Commander Bovino Offers To ‘Handle’ Protests Outside Newark ICE Facility

A former top Customs and Border Patrol official who was demoted by the Trump administration over his handling of immigration enforcement in Minnesota photographed himself at an airport Thursday and offered to fly into Newark to “handle” clashes between protesters and ICE agents at a detention center near the city.Former Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino posted a picture of himself standing in front of the gate of a United Airlines flight to Newark while taking a potshot at Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin over his handling of the riots outside the Delaney Hall detention center, which have now stretched into their sixth day. In his post on X, Mr. Bovino wrote that Mr. Mullin “and the rest of them have been trying to handle these riots and … well, let’s just say it’s not going great.”“Should I just handle this myself? Those agents’ lives are at stake due to this inaction,” Mr. Bovino wrote. He finished the post by addressing it to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’s X handle.Roughly 300 ICE detainees have been on a hunger and labor strike since Friday over what their attorneys and politicians like Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, said were “deplorable” conditions at the facility that is privately owned and operated by the GEO Group. They complained of overcrowded rooms, “extremely cold” cells, and inmates sleeping on floors.Mr. Mullin has denied reports of hunger strikes at Delaney Hall and said there were “no subprime conditions” at the facility. He said “only a handful of individuals” were refusing to eat over their demands for “ethnic right food.”“The fact is, we’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn,” he told reporters.Mr. Mullin also threatened to remove Customs and Border Patrol officers from Newark Airport to help control the protests outside Delaney Hall. “That may affect international flights coming in and out of their airport because I’m going to have to pull Customs and Border Protection officers out of being able to process international flights and put them helping our ICE agents,” Mr. Mullin told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday.Protesters dressed in face coverings have attempted to form human barricades outside the detention center while berating federal ICE officers with chants like “you will hang” and “every cop, every fed, shoot yourself in the head.”At least six protesters have been arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers, according to the DHS. “Assaulting and obstructing ICE law enforcement is a crime and felony,” the DHS said in a statement.Mr. Bovino was sent back to his previous job as Border Patrol sector chief in El Centro, California, in January and retired from federal service in March. Previously, he had helped command 3,000 federal officers deployed to Minnesota during DHS’s Operation Metro Surge, which the ICE acting director, Todd Lyons, called “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever.”The operation coincided with the exposure of alleged widespread welfare fraud involving members of Minnesota’s large Somali community. Mr. Bovino was removed from Minnesota after two fatal federal law enforcement-involved shootings of local protesters and heightened tensions between authorities and local politicians.On X Thursday, a fan of Mr. Bovino’s suggested that he should have been appointed to run DHS. “We’d be 50 million deportations deep,” he replied.

Ex-Border Patrol Commander Bovino Offers To ‘Handle’ Protests Outside Newark ICE Facility

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