<\/p>\n
Recently demoted border patrol official Gregory Bovino<\/a> reportedly made mocking and sarcastic remarks about the Jewish faith of Minnesota\u2019s US attorney, Daniel Rosen, during a phone call with prosecutors in the state earlier in January.<\/p>\n According to the New York Times<\/a>, Bovino mocked Rosen for observing Shabbat, a weekly day of rest that begins at sunset on Friday and ends at sunset on Saturday \u2013 and used the term \u201cchosen people\u201d in a sarcastic way during a phone call with the lawyers on 12 January.<\/p>\n The call came after Bovino requested a meeting with Rosen to push the Minnesota US attorney\u2019s office into a stronger response toward criminalizing people whom Bovino believed were impeding federal agents from enforcing the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in the state, the Times reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n Rosen delegated the call to a deputy and, with several prosecutors on the call, Bovino complained that Rosen had been hard to reach during the weekend because of Shabbat.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the justice department (DoJ) and Rosen\u2019s office in Minnesota<\/a> did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.<\/p>\n Bovino, 55, has become one of the most visible faces of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown across the US, initially in Los Angeles, Chicago and other Democratic-led cities \u2013 and more recently in Minneapolis. His provocative responses to border patrol\u2019s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti<\/a>, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, were followed by his withdrawal from the midwestern city<\/a>. Meanwhile, the Trump administration was shifting its posture about the shooting, backtracking from its initial claims that Pretti was \u201ca domestic terrorist\u201d.<\/p>\n Pretti was filming immigration officials in Minneapolis on 24 January and, after a confrontation, border patrol shot him to death. Bovino claimed that Pretti intended to \u201cmassacre\u201d federal agents before the killing was met with protests.<\/p>\n The DHS claimed the agents fired in self-defense after the nurse, who they say had a handgun, resisted their efforts to disarm him \u2013 but videos recorded by witnesses<\/a> show that Pretti was holding a phone, not a firearm.<\/p>\n Pretti\u2019s killing came 17 days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis while she drove away from a confrontation. Good\u2019s killing also spurred protests.<\/p>\n