Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, is criticizing a WBEZ and Sun-Times report about comments he made Sunday in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.
Bovino spoke to reporter Chip Mitchell as the commander led dozens of agents on a patrol in which they made several immigration arrests. Bovino said in the interview his team was choosing people to arrest based partly on “how they look.”
Those remarks led Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to accuse Bovino’s forces of “harassing people for not being white.”
In an interview with NewsNation, Bovino said his comments were taken out of context and were “grossly inaccurate.”
Below is a transcript of Sunday’s interview. The interview, recorded on an iPhone, includes background noise from the crowd. Listen to the unedited audio by tapping the red listen button at the top of the article.
Transcript
Chip Mitchell: I’m with WBEZ, the NPR affiliate, also working with the Sun-Times. We’re the same outlet here. So, I interviewed a woman who was just a passerby, lives in the West Loop, 28-year-old. She’s in marketing and she said, ‘They’re amassed in this large number.’ I said, ‘What do you think they’re up to down here and what do you think, there’s so many of them?’ And she said, ‘Well, I think they’re just trying to intimidate people. It’s scary. And they’re looking for vulnerable people.’ What’s the reality? What’s going on?
Gregory Bovino: I think the reality is 90% of everyone we’ve encountered today, other than a very small but vocal minority are glad we’re here, more thumbs up, more we’re glad you’re finally here, especially your inner-city residents, the ones that have been the ones that have been up against your violent gang members and that four years of unmitigated immigration across the border, those folks, as well as the 90 percent here today are very glad we’re in Chicago. And we’re not going anywhere.
Mitchell: What’s going on here in River North. It’s a very tony neighborhood.
Bovino: A very what neighborhood?
Mitchell: It’s high, upper-income.
Bovino: It’s a regular patrol like we would anywhere else. We work for the taxpayer, whether it’s in a tony neighborhood as you say, or any neighborhood. The threat remains in the United States. Chicago’s got a lot of murders. We’re going to make the city a safer place and it could be here. It could be Cicero, it could be South Chicago, it could be anywhere in Illinois.
Editors note: A few minutes before the interview, Sun-Times reporter Ashlee Rezin witnessed Bovino’s team detaining a passerby. “We got a runner,” Bovino yelled, as the commander joined the agents in a sprint down the street. The chase ended with the man’s detention. The man was shorter than the agents, barely reaching their shoulders, had black hair, a pencil mustache, a goatee, and brown skin.
Mitchell: My partner — Ashlee [Rezin], the [Sun-Times] photographer — she said that you, the guy who was arrested before, seemed to be because he ran. Is that what happened?
Bovino: No, there’s various indicators, we call them articulable facts, and he exhibited articulable facts that made us take a look and then we took a look and our suspicions were proven true. It does appear right now he’s an illegal alien.
Mitchell: How can you tell by appearance?
Bovino: You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that. It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal alienage in a particular place or location. Then obviously the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you? What’s your name again?
Mitchell: Chip.
Bovino: Chip? Hey, Chip, you or other folks, how do they appear in relation to what you or other people look like. So, a lot of different things that go into that and then you’ve also got that agent experience and knowledge.
Mitchell: This particular guy.
Bovino: What’s that?
Mitchell: This particular guy, what were the factors?
Bovino: You know, I’ll get into that. That’s still an ongoing federal investigation, so I’ll get back with you on exactly what that is once we determine all those facts.
Mitchell: How many arrests today so far downtown?
Bovino: Several arrests, but I don’t have a number. Two different teams out, so I’ll have to get that number when the teams consolidate those numbers.
Mitchell: This is one team here?
Bovino: This is, there were actually two teams out today.
Mitchell: So there’s a third?
Bovino: There’s teams everywhere, all over Chicago. There’s hundreds of agents.
Mitchell: These are the two that are downtown though?
Bovino: It appears, yes. Hey, Chip, thank you. I appreciate it.
For FCC compliance the on-air version of the audio removed profanity used by protesters nearby. The interview aired on WBEZ September 30, 2025.