Share and Follow
A childhood marked by tragedy significantly influenced Greg Bovino, the determined figurehead of Trump’s stringent approach to illegal immigration, when he was merely an 11-year-old boy in the countryside.
Though this misfortune profoundly impacted his early years, it also fortified his resolve, shaping him into the leader who spearheaded the recent operation in Charlotte.
Journeying to Greg’s roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina unveils a poignant secret: his father, under the influence, caused a fatal accident involving a young woman, as revealed by long-buried court documents sourced by the Daily Mail.
In an insightful, exclusive conversation with his younger sister, she credited his resilient nature to the challenges he faced, a trait nurtured by their father who instilled toughness in him and continued to be a guiding influence until his passing from cancer in 1994.
“Yes, it was tough,” recalls Natalie Bovino, a 51-year-old nurse practitioner, during the interview at her home near Blowing Rock, “but as our dad would say—‘What are you going to do to overcome it?’”
The unfortunate accident occurred on June 6, 1981: Michael Bovino, owner of a thriving bar in town called the Library Club, left work intoxicated and smashed into a car.
Janie Mae Mitchell, a 26-year-old woman in the other vehicle, was killed.
The victim’s family told the Daily Mail that she was driving into town with her husband that night when Bovino, a stranger driving in a car with empty bottles of alcohol, smashed into them.
Greg Bovino has become the face of President Trump’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration as one of his top Border Patrol commanders
Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, Bovino fell in love with all things hunting, fishing and even got his first shotgun at age 8, his sister Natalie Bovino told the Daily Mail
Records show that the 37-year-old father was charged with manslaughter and pleaded guilty to death by motor vehicle, was sentenced to a year in jail and forced to receive treatment for alcoholism.
His previously well-to-do family had to sell the bar and struggled financially. The parents divorced three years later.
‘He was hard,’ Natalie Bovino shared of her late father. ‘Toughness, hard work, that was drilled in and baked in.’
The dad bought his son boxing gloves and sparred with him, teaching him to take a punch and get up after being knocked down.
Bovino took the father’s lessons to heart, pushing himself to be strong – physically and mentally.
He joined the Watauga High School wrestling team and later competed in triathlons.
He also tested his limits by heading off into the snowy wildness tracking a deer for an entire day.
In 1994, Natalie said her 24-year-old brother went so far as to enter a Toughman contest in Asheville, North Carolina, and take on post-retirement Bobby ‘Squirrel’ Stewart, a Golden Gloves champion.
His sister Natalie described their childhood as ‘Rockwellian’ and said their upbringing by their veteran father taught them to be tough and independent
Greg was born in 1970 in San Bernadino, California to Michael (left)and Betty Bovino
Greg’s life was changed forever when his father had to serve a year in prison for killing a woman in a drunken car crash. His parents divorced three years later
The young man won in a split decision.
‘Bobby Squirrel was like 185 pounds and Greg was 149,’ his sister marveled. ‘Bobby broke Greg’s nose in the first round and Greg knocked him down in the third.’
These days, Bovino continues to psych himself up for big Border Patrol assignments by watching a YouTube video showing Rocky Marciano, the late heavyweight champion and legendary bruiser, pound opponents into submission.
‘Greg loves Rocky Marciano,’ Natalie told the Daily Mail. ‘When he gets ready to do something difficult, he’ll watch the video ‘Rocky Marciano was a Savage.’ He goes and goes and goes and doesn’t stop. And Greg gets motivated to not stop, to never give up, never quit.’
Greg Bovino was born in 1970 in San Bernardino County, California, where his father served on a military base after being drafted during the Vietnam War.
Two years later, his parents Michael and Betty Bovino moved across the country to Blowing Rock, where the mom’s family goes back eight generations. The couple had two more children: Natalie, born in 1974, and Nicholas in 1979.
Natalie Bovino described their early childhood as Rockwellian, growing up in a town of about 1,000 people in the High Country of Western North Carolina.
Country life was fitting for Greg who developed a love for the outdoors and was seen in one photo smiling as he held up an apparent rattlesnake, which he caught using his own snake catcher fashioned out of piping and a cord
Greg and his sister Natalie as children on the back up a pickup truck filled with corn in their hometown in Watauga County, NC
‘It was literally perfect,’ she told the Daily Mail, describing the closeness of their community and family, which included their ‘Paw Paw’, ‘Granny’, aunts, uncles and cousins.
In those early years, the family was living the good life thanks largely to the success of the Library Club.
‘The bouncers would drop huge bags of money off, stacks and stacks,’ Natalie said. ‘He did incredibly well.’
The family was able to buy their house and a boat they’d ride on Watauga Lake, and membership to a country club where they ran a side business, a drink stand, on the ninth hole.
It was there that Greg Bovino developed a love for the great outdoors, hiking, fishing and hunting.
Photos show the smiling young boy holding up an apparent copperhead, which he caught using his own snake catcher fashioned out of piping and a cord.
His parents bought him his first shotgun at age 8, which he used to shoot deer, rabbits and squirrels.
He also enjoyed flipping through hunting magazines, which is how Bovino was first introduced to the subject that would come to define his adult life – immigration enforcement.
Greg’s dream of becoming a border enforcer began with the hunting magazines he devoured as a boy, where he first learned about the job from legendary Border Patrol agents–turned–writers Skeeter Skelton and Charles Askins
He was deeply disturbed by the 1982 film The Border, in which Jack Nicholson portrays a corrupt Border Patrol agent – a depiction that clashed with the heroic image Greg had long admired, according to Natalie
He also revered Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein’s 1959 military sci-fi classic about an interstellar war between humans and alien bugs – a book his sister says he still reads to this day
The hunting publications featured columns written by ‘old time’ Border Control agents such as Skeeter Skelton and Charles Askins. The young boy had found his calling.
‘He thought it was the Wild West,’ Natalie Bovino told the Daily Mail. ‘It was like a true frontier. And it was those old timers that inspired that in him.’
He later grew excited to learn that his own uncle from Blowing Rock, Neil Hartley, had produced a feature film on the subject, starring Jack Nicholson.
He rushed to the theater when The Border was released in 1982 and left angry after seeing the main character depicted as a corrupt agent.
‘Greg was so psyched because he’d read all these articles and loved the toughness and the values of all these old timers,’ Natalie told the Daily Mail. ‘Then he went to the movie, and the Border Patrol person was a criminal. Greg’s like 12 and he came home totally pissed about it.’
‘He and I joke about the irony there,’ she added. ‘Neil had no idea what he ignited in Greg. Since then, he was like, “Dude, I want to do Border Patrol”.’
Bovino’s parents divorced three years after the fatal crash, and his mom remarried. His stepfather, Walter Green, made his own strong impressions on the then teenage boy.
According to his sister, their stepfather, a local magistrate judge, provided a counterbalance to their real dad, stressing that you can’t just fight your way through life.
The family moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, when Greg was aged 2. There his father opened a successful bar called the Library Club
Natalie Bovino leafs through old photographs and articles about her brother who has become the face of President Trump’s immigration crackdown
After being the first in his family to graduate college, Greg started his Border Patrol career in 1996 in the El Centro Sector in California and quickly rose through the ranks, serving in tactical units and later leading sectors in New Orleans and in El Centro
A newspaper clipping collected by Greg’s mother Betty announced his promotion as a section chief in Yuma, Arizona in 2008
‘He was an extremely strong person, just in a different way,’ she said. ‘We got this bombastic father, and then we got a second father who taught us to be academic with our actions, and not physical. How do you back everything you have up with facts?’
Bovino became a voracious reader in high school, devouring books by everyone from historian Robert Service to the frontier stories of Louis L’Amour, the sister said.
He grew obsessed with one title in particular, Starship Troopers, a military Sci-Fi novel by Robert Heinlein from 1959 imagining an interstellar war between humanity and alien bugs.
‘Now he reads Starship Troopers once a year,’ his sister told the Daily Mail.
Graduating from Watauga High School in 1988, he became the first in his family to attend college, studying natural resource management at Western Carolina University, before grad school at Appalachian State University. He then earned a master’s degree in national security strategy at National War College.
He began his Border Patrol career in 1996 in the El Centro Sector and quickly rose through the ranks, serving in tactical units and later leading sectors in New Orleans and in El Centro.
‘Early in his career, Greg would run into cartels and be the first one in the door because he had the best marksmanship,’ Natalie said. ‘A lot of times, it was drug cartel based, which he said now has infiltrated every major city with the crime and corruption.
Bovino with President George W. Bush, whom he deeply admired for his speech on the first anniversary of 9/11, emphasizing the nation’s duty to defend itself from danger
Bovino has been hailed as a hero by supporters of Trump’s hardline immigration policies and vilified by critics, including civil rights advocates who accuse him of racial profiling, excessive force and sowing chaos
Bovino led the El Centro district in California during the final year of Trump’s first term in 2020.
He was furious to see what he saw as progress come undone when President Joe Biden relaxed border security, allowing millions of illegal immigrants to cross into the country.
He was relieved of his command after testifying critically about border conditions in August 2023.
He was then promoted earlier this year under President Donald Trump, appointed in June to lead the administration’s first sustained blitz of a major city – Los Angeles. He then moved on to to spearhead ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ in Chicago.
‘We talk about Trump and he’s like, finally I can do my job and not be handheld and watched as horrific things happened,’ Natalie Bovino said.
She spoke for hours about the man she said feels passionate about his job protecting the homeland, how he watched President George W. Bush’s speech on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 talking about the need to defend the country from danger while referencing the ideals of the nation’s Founding Fathers.
Sporting green military fatigues and spiky hair, Bovino has been hailed as a hero by supporters of Trump’s aggressive enforcement strategy and villainized by critics including civil liberties advocates who accuse him of racial profiling, using excessive force and provoking chaos.
Most recently, Bovino faced backlash for throwing a gas canister into a crowd in Chicago without giving a verbal warning – an incident his sister said initially upset the family until he explained it was about not showing fear to get the job done
A former Border Patrol agent presented Greg Bovino with a mock-up picture praising his attitude last year
One video shows Bovino throwing a gas canister into a crowd without giving a verbal warning this fall in Chicago, standing barefaced with a determined stare.
‘We all got really upset by that, at least we did at first,’ the sister said. ‘But you know what he says? He goes: “I will not show fear. It’s a demonstration that I am not going to cower and hide. I have a job to do and it’s going to get done”.
‘Seeing Greg in the spotlight is totally trippy,’ the sister continued. ‘Everybody’s painting Greg out to be a hero or a Nazi. And I’m like, he’s a freaking hero to me. He doesn’t stop and it’s for trying to do the right thing.
‘He tells people he’s out there defending ‘Ma and Pa America,’ she said. ‘That’s the very fiber of his being. It’s everything he stands for as far as his upbringing to his love of history to his honor with his job, which is the safety and security of American citizens.’
Her brother has also become a source of pride for other locals who knew him way back in high school, including Kelly Redmon, who was on the wrestling team with Bovino and is now with the county sheriff’s office.
‘Life was a lot simpler back then,’ Redmon told the Daily Mail. ‘We liked to go hunting and fishing, just regular stuff.’
He said he knew about Greg’s struggles back in 1981 with the fatal crash, recognizing, ‘That was a hard time for them, financially and everything else. They struggled for a while.’
But he was also impressed with his old friend’s strength and resilience.
‘I couldn’t imagine having a better friend,’ he said, and noted they still keep in touch.
‘If he comes home to visit his family, we always try to catch up and have dinner or something like that,’ he said.
Bovino has spoken about his desire to return to North Carolina, saying he plans to harvest apples there after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 57, less than two years from now.
‘We daydream about going on mega sledding adventures,’ his sister told the Daily Mail. ‘His roots are still here. This is his home, and it runs deep.’