For the past year, Americans have watched as immigration officers across the country have engaged in chaotic and aggressive arrest operations. Protests soon followed in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, where federal officers killed Rene Good and Alex Pretti.
But long before much of the public knew the name Gregory Bovino, who until this month was acting as “commander-at-large” for the U.S. Border Patrol, investigative reporter Sergio Olmos was documenting his rise for CalMatters.
Olmos’ latest investigation, “Agents of Chaos: Border Patrol’s Year of Unchecked Force,” for the first time identifies a team of agents who traveled the country with Bovino to carry out some the most consequential violence.
He sat down with Ryan Haas of The Western Edge to discuss his job holding the government accountable, being in the right place at the right time on big stories, and how the language of war is seeping into discourse around U.S. immigration policy.
