The Trump administration is conducting a sweeping overhaul of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with more than a dozen senior officials in various cities being replaced by officials from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). At the heart of this effort is Greg Bovino, commander-at-large of the Border Patrol, who is currently the public face of the Trump administration’s current interior enforcement surges. But what’s unfolding under Bovino isn’t law enforcement. It’s political stagecraft directed from Washington, not the field.
Under Bovino’s command, the Department of Homeland Security has assembled something new: a hybrid, unaccountable task force reporting directly to DHS headquarters and the White House and operating outside the traditional command structures that govern federal law enforcement. It isn’t ICE. It isn’t CBP. It’s a Frankenstein force, stitched together from multiple agencies but loyal to none. Its purpose is to create a community response designed for social media clicks, rather than to keep communities safe.
The recent wave of ICE senior official reassignments makes the motive behind this new structure unmistakable: It’s about control, not competence. Seasoned career leaders — the very people who built ICE’s investigative, detention and removal frameworks — are being pushed aside or relocated for refusing to chase arbitrary arrest quotas or participate in politically driven operations. These aren’t disciplinary moves; they’re purges designed to silence dissent and clear the field for Bovino’s task forces. In effect, the DHS has replaced law enforcement judgment with political obedience, rewarding those who follow orders from the top — and sidelining those who still believe in risk-based enforcement and the rule of law.
For decades, ICE and CBP had distinct yet complementary missions. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) targeted serious offenders in the interior; CBP’s Border Patrol protected the border. Each had apparent oversight, trained professionals and accountability lines that ran through their respective chains of command.
The new structure under Bovino upends that approach. Under his leadership, select personnel from both agencies have been integrated into what’s officially branded a “joint enforcement initiative.” Still, DHS officials describe it as politically controlled, rather than law enforcement-controlled. It doesn’t answer to ICE or CBP leadership — it reports directly to DHS political appointees.
This force is choreographed from the top, executing made-for-media raids in major cities with no mission to respond to public safety, national security priorities or even local needs. Operations once rooted in criminal targeting now focus on optics, including tactical gear, flash arrests and pre-scripted press statements that boast of results. The metrics that best reflect public safety — violent offenders arrested, trafficking rings dismantled, volume of fentanyl seized — are secondary, buried under layers of immigration-only political messaging.
This is not coordination; it’s command theater. As a result, immigration enforcement agencies have become props in a federal performance — eroding confidence not just in immigration enforcement, but in law enforcement as a whole.
Inside ICE and CBP, morale has plummeted. Career officers see precisely what’s happening — and they’re raising their voices — both internally and externally. Many of these officers, who’ve spent years building complex investigations into gang networks and transnational crime, are being reassigned. Border Patrol agents, trained to operate in remote interdiction zones, are being taken “off the line” and are now arresting construction workers in suburban neighborhoods to generate social media content.
These career officials know their badges weren’t meant for political showmanship. And they see the growing danger of a structure that answers not to law enforcement professionals but to non-Senate-confirmed political appointees and advisers seeking headlines.
The resistance is still quiet, but it’s sure to grow. Supervisors will start questioning orders. Local law enforcement partners will continue to resist or withdraw from cooperating with federal law enforcement through arrangements such as 287(g) agreements. They may decide that these agreements no longer reflect community public safety priorities or embody legitimate enforcement. The professionals are unlikely to change, but it’s clear that the mission around them is already being hijacked.
Make no mistake: What Bovino is running is effectively a new DHS entity in all but name. It has its own operational footprint, communications strategy and chain of command. Yet it has no congressional authorization or oversight, and it’s working under a broad mix of law enforcement authorities.
This isn’t just about optics today or this week — it’s about setting the stage for the administration’s next act. Bovino’s “task force” is laying the groundwork for a rapid expansion of so-called soft-sided detention facilities across the country.
Plans and resources are coming together to establish temporary detention compounds capable of processing thousands of people at a time in areas where the Border Patrol will expand deployments in early 2026. These aren’t being built to house violent offenders or national security threats. They’re designed to absorb the surge of arrests of people who pose no safety threat that this political task force intends to generate.
The DHS is pre-positioning enforcement infrastructure and capacity ahead of historic enforcement operations in 2026, but the real intent is clearly political, rather than prioritizing public safety or protecting communities. Next year, as the election season heats up, this infrastructure will enable the DHS and the White House to showcase mass detentions and deportations as evidence of strict and “decisive enforcement.” It represents a fundamental betrayal of what immigration enforcement should be: targeted, risk-based and grounded in public safety.
The price of this spectacle isn’t measured in headlines or detention beds. It’s measured in credibility — the currency every officer and agent relies on to do their job.
Every time a politically directed “operation” sweeps up noncriminals to hit a quota, the trust between law enforcement and the community erodes. Every time a field office is forced to stand up for the cameras, genuine investigations suffer. And every time the White House uses badges to perform toughness, it weakens the institutions those badges represent.
The task force Bovino leads doesn’t represent the best of the DHS. It represents the worst instincts of Washington: power without accountability, politics dressed up as public safety and performance art masquerading as law enforcement.
And if it continues unchecked, it won’t just distort immigration enforcement — it will redefine federal law enforcement itself, turning it from an institution of public trust into a show, with a cast of masked actors, on a political stage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
