<\/p>\n
MINNEAPOLIS \u00ad\u2014 On Greg Bovino\u2019s last<\/span> day as a roving U.S. Border Patrol commander, protesters gathered outside the hotel where the 55-year-old was rumored to be staying. Night had fallen and the temperature was well below freezing. The demonstrators had convened to say goodbye in the loudest and least restful manner possible.<\/p>\n They banged on pots, pans, and drums in the falling snow; shouted into megaphones; and blew into their orange emergency whistles \u2014 a shrill call that\u2019s become synonymous with the Trump administration\u2019s assault in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n From the building\u2019s fourth floor, a group of men looked down on the raucous crowd, drinks in hand. They appeared to be off-duty members of Bovino\u2019s locally despised detail. One of the men turned, set his can down, dropped his shorts, and shook his bare ass<\/a> at the protesters before giving them the finger. Not long after, local police and state troopers wielding wooden clubs overtook the crowd. Several arrests were made<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAll that we know at this moment is that they\u2019re swapping out personnel. That doesn\u2019t tell us anything about policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The motivations for the send-off stemmed from masked federal agents running wild throughout Minnesota for the past two months, and from the trail of civil rights abuses, constitutional violations, and violent videos left in their wake.<\/p>\n The most recent insult was the killing of Alex Pretti. On Saturday, federal immigration agents shot the 37-year-old dead in the street while he attempted to help a woman whom they had shoved to the ground.<\/p>\n In the wake of the killing, Bovino claimed<\/a> that Pretti, who worked as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, \u201cwanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,\u201d despite abundant and immediately available evidence to the contrary<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Monday, amid a wave of national outrage that even had some Republicans<\/a> questioning the heavy-handedness in Minnesota, Bovino was removed from his unusual \u201ccommander-at-large\u201d position and booted back to California. He will reportedly<\/a> retire soon.<\/p>\n The local relief at Bovino\u2019s departure is easy to understand. What is far less clear is how much of a change his replacement, Trump\u2019s border czar Tom Homan, will bring.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been no changes in legal filings, no withdrawing claims, no admissions that people are being detained without cause,\u201d University of Minnesota law professor Emmanuel Maule\u00f3n told The Intercept. \u201cAll that we know at this moment is that they\u2019re swapping out personnel. That doesn\u2019t tell us anything about policies. That doesn\u2019t tell us anything about enforcement priorities. That doesn\u2019t tell us anything about tactics \u2014 and to the extent that we look at the court filings, there are no indications that those things have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n As one example among many, Maule\u00f3n noted that the Trump administration has provided no indication that intends to rescind a recently disclosed internal memo<\/a> that purports authorize immigration agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant, an assertion of authority legal scholars have decried as patently unconstitutional.<\/p>\n This is an election year, and so far, the ultra-nationalist, hyper-militarized crackdown ordered up by White House advisor Stephen Miller and manifested in the streets of Minneapolis is proving decidedly unpopular<\/a>. Currently, the messaging from both the president and Minnesota\u2019s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz is that Homan\u2019s arrival may bring a less divisive, more professional brand of federal immigration policing to the state.<\/p>\n And yet, there\u2019s little evidence of ideological distinction between the new head of \u201cOperation Metro Surge\u201d and the rest of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration hawks. The most notable difference between Homan and Bovino in particular is that Homan has deported a lot more people, and he\u2019s done so at a national level.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, swapping out Bovino for Homan might result in different policies,\u201d said Maule\u00f3n, For now, though, \u201cit seems to be a matter of crisis management more than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of this,\u201d he said, \u201cI read more as political cover rather than any real meaningful signals about what\u2019s going to happen on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n Most recently, Homan has been in the news for being targeted in an FBI corruption investigation<\/a> in which he allegedly accepted a paper bag stuffed with $50,000 in exchange for contracting favors. (The Trump Justice Department dismissed the case.)<\/p>\n Those with a somewhat longer memory will recall that Homan \u2014 along with Miller and others \u2014 was an architect of \u201czero tolerance<\/a>,\u201d a policy that saw thousands of immigrant children separated from their parents and spawned nationwide protests, much like the country is seeing today.<\/p>\n Those with an even deeper knowledge of immigration history will remember that Homan was key to President Barack Obama earning the monicker \u201cdeporter in chief.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Bovino, Homan was once a Border Patrol agent, before transferring to the now defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service. After September 11, 2001, INS earned the dubious distinction of being the only federal agency to be disbanded over the terror attacks. (The agency approved visas for two 9\/11 hijackers.)<\/p>\n Under the colossal new Department of Homeland Security, Homan and his colleagues were folded into a novel agency called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement \u2014 ICE, which was divided into two wings, the deportation officers of Enforcement and Removal Operations, and the special agents of Homeland Security Investigations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
Homan\u2019s Record<\/strong><\/h2>\n