Border Patrol’s Sacramento presence brings Trump’s immigration show of force to CA
The political message was anything but subtle.
“The state of California is not a sanctuary state,” Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official, told a Fox News reporter in front of California’s Capitol Thursday. “There is no sanctuary anywhere.”
Earlier that morning, agents arrested immigrants near a Home Depot on Florin Road during the agency’s first major operation in the area this year. It was an aggressive move for the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector that Bovino leads and which is based in Southern California near the Mexico border.
Instead of just mentioning the arrest in a press release — as it has done for many others under the Trump administration — Bovino’s team brought the reporter, Bill Melugin, along with them.
Melugin’s report aired on the channel before noon and showed video of agents chasing after and detaining people in a parking lot.
“We’re going to effect this mission,” Bovino told him, “and secure the homeland.”
Arresting 11 immigrants and one U.S. citizen outside a Home Depot is far from the largest operation in Donald Trump’s first six months back in office. Yet the enforcement Thursday was about much more than about numbers.
The public display hit televisions and phone screens across the country and was an unmistakable signal that the Trump administration was not done flexing its political muscle in California. For weeks, federal authorities had conducted a series of operations in Los Angeles. Now, immigration enforcement had officially arrived at the actual doorstep of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority.
Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a Newsom spokesperson, called it “militaristic, unlawful and cruelly indiscriminate targeting by federal immigration officials.”
For weeks U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had more quietly arrested people as they left hearings in Sacramento Immigration Court. The agency had also conducted more targeted, and less visible, operations throughout Northern California.
“Prior administrations, from across the ideological spectrum, have often gone out of the way to sort of minimize or obscure actions they take that could be deemed unappealing to most people,” said Ethan Porter, a political science and public affairs professor at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. But, Porter added, the Trump administration has a different approach.
“They seem to believe that communicating that they are rounding people up, has political upside for them.”
‘Something new’
Melugin, in an interview Thursday night, said he had tried for years to ride along with Border Patrol agents under the Biden administration. His requests got nowhere.
That changed ahead of the Sacramento operation.
“They offered to have us come,” said Melugin, who is based in Los Angeles, but covers immigration stories from across the country.
“This was something new,” he said.
The prominent feature on a dominant television network wasn’t enough for Bovino.
A few hours after Melugin’s report appeared on air, the Border Patrol chief posted a 44-second video on his X account. It was sleek, professionally edited and shot. “Power,” the Kanye West song, played over the agency’s own video of agents detaining people.
“This is how and why we secure the homeland,” Bovino said, with his hands on his holster. “For ma and pa America, we’ve got your backs.”
Magdalena Wojcieszak, a UC Davis communication professor, said posting the video so quickly after the event was “very savvy” to attract the most engagement and likelihood that people would share it. The post was viewed more than 250,000 times on X as of Friday afternoon.
The content also appeared strategic.
“Its position, the music, the imagery was very well chosen for high patriotic impact,” said Wojcieszak, whose research focuses on how people select political information online.
It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for Bovino.
“No sanctuary. No hiding. No exceptions. Even in Beverly Hills we roll deep,” he posted July 2 on X, above a video of federal authorities detaining people in the community. After armed federal authorities swarmed a Los Angeles park in June, Bovino threatened to return again.
Michael Trujillo, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles, called the public displays of enforcement a “poor man’s G.I. Joe.”
“What they’re trying to do in California is just all theater,” he said. “They’re not really doing much of anything.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees Border Patrol, did not respond to a request to interview Bovino and questions about its decision to heavily publicize the Sacramento operation.
Hector Barajas, a spokesperson for the California Republican Party, said it was Democrats who were creating political theater. He alluded to California Sen. Alex Padilla’s removal from a news conference in Los Angeles last month after he interrupted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. And when a New York City mayoral candidate was detained after he linked arms with a person federal authorities wanted to arrest.
“You have a president who ran on this issue and he is keeping true to what he ran on,” Barajas said. “I don’t think it’s a surprise that people are being arrested and being deported.”
The Department of Homeland Security put out its own news release about Thursday’s operation with a photo of one of the people who was taken into custody. It called the man a “serial criminal” and said he was arrested 67 times.
Are more highly public arrests on the way?
Bovino kept it open in his interview with Melugin.
“We’ll be here,” he said. “You’ll probably see us in many other locations as well.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Border Patrol’s Sacramento presence brings Trump’s immigration show of force to CA."
