Immigration Suspects Approached Partly On Basis Of ‘How They Look’: Top Border Patrol Agent

Last Updated:October 01, 2025, 01:00 IST

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that the increased immigration operations in the city are frightening people rather than helping them.

A California court in July blocked immigration agents from targeting people for enforcement actions based on their accent or “apparent race or ethnicity,” but that order was overturned earlier this month by the US Supreme Court. (IMAGE: AP PHOTO)

Amid growing concerns over stringent actions being taken against the illegal immigrants in the US, a Border Patrol agent has said that they choose whom to approach, in part, based on “how they look”.

WBEZ Radio and the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Gregory Bovino, a order Patrol official whose command is based in California, as saying: “You know, there’s many different factors that go into something like that. t would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens 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?” he added.

However, later, the agent took to X saying: “s usual, agenda driven ‘journalists’ skew facts thus increasing violence against law enforcement. 99% of citizens yesterday thanked us!!”

According to CNN, a California court in July blocked immigration agents from targeting people for enforcement actions based on their accent or “apparent race or ethnicity,” but that order was overturned earlier this month by the US Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said that the increased immigration operations in the city are frightening people rather than helping them.

“This is not about safety. This is not about immigration. This is about fomenting chaos and terrorizing the people of Chicago and cities across America,” he told CNN.

This came after President Donald Trump suggested using some of “these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military”.

According to CNN, the FBI and Border Patrol conducted a “targeted immigration enforcement operation” on Tuesday.

As per a research by a migration data scientist based in Maryland, there has been a rise in deaths of detainees following the crackdown by the Trump administration.

The death toll of detainees in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reached 16 since January, which marks more than double the total deaths reported in 2024.

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