‘Chosen people’: Controversial US Border Patrol officer said to mock Jewish prosecutor

Gregory Bovino complained that US attorney in Minnesota Daniel Rosen — an Orthodox Jew — was difficult to reach during Shabbat, New York Times reports

Gregory Bovino, the US Border Patrol officer leading the violent immigration crackdown in Minnesota, made derogatory remarks regarding a Jewish prosecutor’s faith in a conversation with attorneys, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

According to the report, Bovino mockingly used the term “chosen people” and complained that Daniel Rosen — the US attorney in Minnesota and an Orthodox Jew — was not on the call because he was keeping Shabbat, asking sarcastically whether Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish criminals do not take weekends off.

The phone conversation reportedly took place on January 12, one day before the resignation of six federal prosecutors in protest over the US Justice Department’s handling of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.

Bovino reportedly sought a meeting with Rosen — who delegated it to a deputy because of Shabbat — to call for a more aggressive approach in seeking criminal charges against people Bovino claimed were unlawfully obstructing his agents in their work.

Bovino and the Justice Department did not respond to The Times request for comment, and a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department told the paper, “Instead of focusing on gossip, why don’t you focus on something actually important like the victims of illegal alien crime or the criminals taken out of Minneapolis communities?”

The violence of ICE agents in Minnesota, which has already led to the death of two people, has sparked a public outcry against the agency.

Bovino has personally been called out for wearing a greatcoat that some German media outlets said resembled a Nazi uniform. Bovino pushed back against comparisons made between ICE and the Nazi Gestapo, and has also defended his greatcoat, saying it was a “Border Patrol issue.”

Bovino’s unpopularity in the wake of the violence has led him to leave Minneapolis.

Rosen, who declined to respond to a request for comment and began serving as the US attorney in Minnesota in October, once sat on the board of a Jewish group now protesting the Trump administration’s immigration offensive in the state.

“Jewish history tells us that Jews fare poorly in societies that turn polarized, and where that polarization evolves into factional hatreds in the non-Jewish societies within which we live,” Rosen said after being confirmed in October. “Those factional hatreds virtually always evolve into violent expressions of hate against the Jews.”

At the time, Rosen said his broader concern about antisemitism was one of his central motivators for taking on the role. He added that he studies Talmud daily and that he became Shabbat-observant 20 years ago.

Rosen, a University of Minnesota law school alum, came to his office from the world of civil litigation and eminent domain law with a near-total lack of prosecutorial experience. His supporters cited, instead, his experience with Jewish groups.

JTA contributed to this report.