Note: An early version of this story appeared in the Charlotte Optimist’s weekly newsletter, published at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday August 23. This version has been updated with a reply from Bovino.
Gregory Bovino, the former U.S. Border Patrol official who led last November’s “Charlotte’s Web” immigration operation, made an unannounced stop at Manolo’s Bakery Sunday night around 5:30, along with a videographer who documented the interaction between him and bakery owner Manolo Betancur.
Betancur’s Central Avenue bakery became a gathering spot for protesters of last year’s weeklong operation, as local resistance swelled.
Betancur sent me the photo above and called me a little after 6 on Sunday, his voice trembling. He said the interaction lasted several minutes. Bovino asked to enter the bakery, but Betancur said he denied him.
“At the beginning I was shaking. I got relaxed when I started talking to him. I said, ‘What are you doing here,’” Betancur told me. “He said, ‘I can go where I want.’ I said, ‘You’re not welcome in this parking lot.’”
Bovino, who briefly launched an exploratory committee for a potential presidential run in 2028, responded to my direct message late Sunday from the X account he’s operated since retiring. He said he visited the bakery to dispute recent claims from current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott that deportations are up since Bovino’s departure.
“I decided to show America that mass deportations are NOT being carried out in any form or fashion. A government lie,” Bovino wrote to me.
The businesses his operation targeted in Charlotte last November: “It appears they are flourishing,” he added.
In other words, the man who brought “Charlotte’s Web” to the city returned to the operation’s most symbolic address to use a bakery to make content to prove a point.
Betancur, a native of Colombia who’s been a U.S. citizen for nearly 20 years, released a statement late Sunday saying, “This is bigger than Manolo’s Bakery. Families are afraid, employees are afraid to go to work, customers are afraid to leave their homes, and small businesses are paying the price.”
I’ll continue to follow up.