A rideshare driver in Minneapolis has described his encounter with Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino after being questioned by federal agents over his accent.
“It was very obvious to me by the way Border Patrol was acting with me unprofessionally, that they really didn’t care about my identity,” Ahmed Bin Hassan told CNN on Thursday.
“[An agent] said, ‘You know what? I know you’re not an American citizen, and I demand that you show me proof of that … What’s making me ask you this stuff is, you do not sound like me… You don’t have the same accent as me.’
“So I was shocked. I was startled. And I said, ‘Are we using accents now to verify citizenship? It was just absurd to hear that.”
Moments after the first encounter with agents, Bin Hassan said Bovino approached him and talked to him in what he described as an unserious and almost joking manner.
“They’re just harassing people based on skin color… What do you guys want to do today? You guys gonna take me away?” Hassan asks in the video he captured of it.
“Well, that depends. Are you an illegal alien?” Bovino responded, to which Hassan replied, “Yes, I’m an illegal alien from another planet.”
“If that’s the case, if you’re from another planet – that counts too,” Bovino says.
The interactions took place the same day as the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Less than three weeks later, Border Patrol agents would be involved in a second fatal shooting, this time of ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
In the video, Hassan is heard questioning Bovino over Good’s death.
“What the hell happened? Why are you guys shooting at people?” he says. “Why did you guys shoot that lady? Answer me that there’s an officer today that shot a lady in the head, dude, for what? You could have just got her, man, she’s not gonna fly out of the country like an alien.”
“On a spaceship?” Bovino responds after appearing to shrug off Hassan’s comments.
The Independent has contacted Border Patrol and the DHS for comment on the interaction between the two men.
Bovino has now been removed from Minneapolis in the wake of outrage following Pretti’s death on Saturday. The Trump administration denied reports that Bovino had been removed from his position as “commander at large” of Border Patrol.
