There's More to Greg Bovino's Coat Than You Think

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PERSPECTIVE
There’s More to Greg Bovino’s Coat Than You Think

The head of Border Patrol isn’t referencing the Nazis — but he is sending a message.


U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino, center, stands flanked by fellow federal agents during a protest against ICE outside the Bishop Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 15, 2026. | Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images

By DEREK GUY
01/24/2026 10:00 AM EST

Derek Guy is a menswear writer who has written for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and Esquire. He runs a men's style site called Die, Workwear!

This past week, images of Greg Bovino, the commander of the U.S. Border Patrol, spread rapidly across social media as he appeared in Minneapolis flanked by federal agents and shouting orders at protesters. Moving through snow-covered streets, Bovino wore an olive wool, double-breasted overcoat with epaulettes, brass buttons and pointed applied cuffs. Online critics described it as a “Nazi cosplay coat,” and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press account on X called it “Nazi-coded.”

Yet while Bovino’s coat shares visual similarities with certain Nazi uniforms — including the German M40 overcoat worn by Kriegsmarine officers — it belongs to a much broader lineage. The double-breasted closure, metal buttons and Ulster collar are hallmarks of the greatcoat, a 19th-century form of outerwear worn by soldiers from many different nations. Members of the Allied forces, including British and American troops, wore greatcoats during the Second World War. Joseph Stalin appeared in one at the 1945 Yalta Conference.

Like field shirts, trenchcoats and combat boots, the greatcoat belongs to a shared military vocabulary that predates fascism and has been used by military forces around the world. And that vocabulary has proliferated out into the broader culture in decidedly not fascist ways: In the BBC series Doctor Who, for example, the Doctor — portrayed as eccentric, humane and resistant to authoritarianism and violence — often wears a similar overcoat.

Although critics fixated on the wrong historical reference, their discomfort wasn’t imaginary. Bovino’s coat may not be a Hitlerian symbol, but it is a symbol for something else: the increasing militarization of immigration enforcement. ... Uniforms perform three important roles: They reveal what an institution believes itself to be; they shape how the public sees service members; and they affect how service members see themselves. Psychologists call the third phenomenon “enclothed cognition.” In a widely cited 2012 study, researchers found that participants who wore a white coat they believed belonged to a doctor performed better on attention-related tasks than those who wore the same coat described as something that belonged to a painter. Subsequent studies showed that other types of clothes can shape behavior: suits can make wearers think more abstractly and behave more assertively; medical uniforms can increase the wearer’s empathy; and police uniforms can heighten their threat sensitivity and readiness to use force.

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