Gregory Bovino, U.S. Border Patrol commander, on Thursday defended his trench coat after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) accused him of buying “SS garb.”
“That coat is definitely Border Patrol issued,” Bovino said on “On Balance with Leland Vittert” on NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network. “I’ve had it over 25 years. I bought that as a young agent, approximately 1999.”
He noted that he wore the same coat to former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus’s swearing-in ceremony in Washington, D.C., in 2021. Magnus, a former Tucson, Ariz., police chief, submitted his resignation to former President Biden in 2022 at the request of former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Bovino added that he received “nothing but compliments on that coat.”
“Fast forward a few years to this administration, all of a sudden it’s a problem,” he continued. “Hey, what changed there? Why is it a problem now than it was during the last administration?”
Newsom talked about Bovino while onstage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said the commander was dressed as though he “literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb.” The California governor then referred to federal immigration enforcement officers as a “private army [of] masked men.”
“People disappearing, literally no due process,” Newsom continued. “Windows being smashed. Seat belts on being literally just cut off. People dragged in the streets, kids, separated from families, knocking on doors, racially-profiling American citizens.”
Newsom has made similar comparisons in the past. Last October, he shared on the social platform X a post from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with a video that briefly features Bovino in the coat. The ICE post defended Bovino as “putting his life on the line to protect our citizens, and no amount of radical terror or anarchy will stop us in our mission.”
“If you think the calls of fascism and authoritarianism are hyperbole pause and watch this video,” Newsom wrote. “They aren’t even trying to hide who they are.”
The New York Times reported on Bovino’s coat Thursday, calling it “a flashpoint in the online conversation about ICE, in part because its historical antecedents are also impossible to ignore.” Online discourse has echoed Newsom’s remarks, comparing the coat to attire worn by uniformed Nazi officers under Adolf Hitler’s reign less than a century ago.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin reiterated some of Bovino’s remarks to the Times, saying the coat is part of “standard-issue Border Patrol winter dress uniform.”
“There are legitimate policy debates to be had, but manufacturing fake outrage and likening law enforcement to the Nazis or Gestapo is incredibly dangerous,” she added in her statement.
Princeton University history professor Harold James told the newspaper that Bovino’s attire is “intended to intimidate and also provoke.”
“Using the coat to confront crowds with armed supporters, together with Bovino’s cropped hair and the (apparently) black or dark clothing underneath, gives the unmistakable whiff of dictators and of the 1930s,” James said.
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