Gregory Bovino — until recently the face of the Trump administration’s violent deportation campaign in Chicago and other cities — was portrayed as a slave-owning Confederate general in a photo emailed to him by an agent he later installed in a high-level U.S. Border Patrol job in New Orleans i n 2018, court records show.Bovino told the agent to delete the email immediately. Still, in a deposition in a related job discrimination lawsuit, the North Carolina native said he saw nothing racist about it. Bovino said the email was “not relative to the mission” and “worthless.” He never reported it to his superiors or launched an investigation.Instead, he promoted the agent, whom he’d previously worked with, bypassing the federal agency's normal competitive process for career advancement.It was only when a top Border Patrol lawyer learned of the email in 2020 that an internal investigation was opened. That investigation ended with federal Department of Homeland Security officials finding that the agent who sent the email did nothing wrong. The agent testified in a deposition that he sent it to Bovino because he thought it was funny and that Bovino is a “history buff.”In a court memo, the agent, Christopher Bullock, said he regretted his “lack of judgment” in sending the email. He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Professional Responsibility had investigated but that “no action was taken against me.”The Confederate photos surfaced in a lawsuit that two Border Patrol officials filed against DHS in 2019, saying they were passed over for promotions because they’re Black.Bovino was accused of shelving a list of qualified candidates, including the two Black officials, and selecting Bullock, who’d worked with Bovino dating to the early 2000s. Bovino and Bullock were named and given "special thanks" in the acknowledgments for the 2015 movie "La Migra" about the Border Patrol set in Imperial Beach, Calif. — Bovino as the agent-in-charge there and Bullock as his deputy, according to the film website IMDb.A few months after he sent the email, Bullock moved in 2018 to the post of division chief of the Border Patrol's New Orleans sector, which includes the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi.The two Black officials and two women who also sued the Border Patrol over being passed over for promotion settled their lawsuits for undisclosed amounts. DHS and the Border Patrol didn’t respond to questions about the Confederate photo or the lawsuits. Bullock and Bovino couldn’t be reached. U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino leaving the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in October. Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times The Confederate general emails were first published by The American Prospect magazine after Bovino’s abrupt removal from overseeing the Trump administration's deportation efforts in Minneapolis. Bovino was reportedly yanked as commander-at-large of immigration enforcement there after Border Patrol agents under his charge fatally shot Alex Pretti, a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis. Bovino made public statements about Pretti — who was the second civilian killed by federal agents this month — that video footage showing the circumstances of the shooting contradicted.The New Orleans employment cases offer a rare window into Bovino’s two-year stint at the head of the Border Patrol’s New Orleans sector, a post he held from July 2018 to April 2020. After his time in New Orleans, Bovino became chief of the agency’s sector in El Centro, Calif. He remained in Southern California until being dispatched to Chicago and other cities far from any U.S. border, touting himself as “commander-at-large,” after Trump returned to office a year ago.In a memo filed in the New Orleans lawsuit, Bovino defended his selection of Bullock to be one of the New Orleans sector's three division chiefs — those jobs are two tiers below chief patrol officer, which was Bovino's title there.Bovino wrote: “As incoming CPA, I wanted the New Orleans Sector to adopt a more aggressive and proactive approach to the mission.”That can be seen now as having telegraphed what would come later: a sometimes-brutal deportation campaign he oversaw in January 2025 in California and then took to Illinois, North Carolina, New Orleans and Minneapolis, where his agents have tear-gassed and shot protesters.In court filings, Kevin Vogeltanz, a lawyer for the two Black Border Patrol agents — Jon Joyner and Randy Williams — said the Confederate photos were "obviously racially charged."One photo was of Confederate Gen. William Mahone, a slave owner who became a U.S. senator after the Civil War. The photo had a heading that said, "Chief Bovino." Another photo of Confederate soldier reenactors surrounding a Confederate flag was headed "NLL All Hands Meeting." A third photo of Union soldiers was labeled "NLL Sector HQ." The New Orleans sector is code-named NLL.In a court filing, Volgeltanz said the All Hands Meeting photo represented the New Orleans sector's rank-and-file Border Patrol agents, most of them white. He said the Union soldiers photo represented the sector’s minority leadership, including Joyner, Williams and the two other officials who sued — one a Hispanic woman, the other a white woman. The three Civil War-related images Border Patrol Agent Christopher Bullock sent to his superior, Gregory Bovino, in a 2018 email.U.S. District Court, New Orleans Joyner's lawsuit noted that he was the highest-ranking Black employee of the Border Patrol at the time and that 5% of all agents nationwide were Black.Joyner and Williams said Bovino shut down the competitive hiring practice that would have showcased their high qualifications so he could instead move up his less qualified friend, according to their consolidated lawsuits.Vogeltanz said the Confederate photos were not the "first bizarre or racially charged email that Bovino and Bullock had shared." A photoshopped image of former President Barack Obama with Gregory Bovino’s face (left) superimposed over that of the speaker of the House and Border Patrol agent Christopher Bullock’s face over that of the vice president.U.S. District Court, New Orleans In their lawsuits, the two agents pointed to a meme of former President Barack Obama giving a State of the Union address with the heads of Bovino and Bullock in place of the heads of the vice president and speaker of the House.Bovino and Bullock didn't explain the meaning of the photo.Bovino said he kept it on his work computer for years. And Bullock sent the same image to Bovino after he was promoted to the New Orleans position in 2018, according to the lawsuits.According to court records, Bullock's wife also was a Border Patrol official. It's unclear whether they still work for the agency.Asked Tuesday about Bovino's reported removal from Minnesota, President Donald Trump told Fox News: "You know, Bovino’s very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy, and, in some cases, that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here.”Though Bovino's once-active social media account was reportedly frozen and has remained silent since he was apparently moved back to California, he resurfaced Wednesday night in a video posted on X by a right-wing influencer. Standing in front of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, dressed in full uniform, he referred to the presidents carved on the mountain behind him as the "original turn and burn" — his phrase for his aggressive deportation campaign.“I love you, I support you, and I salute you,” Bovino said, addressing the Border Patrol agents he led in Minnesota. Related 10 things to know about Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino Greg Bovino’s the star of Trump’s deportation show. We trace his roots. 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