The Hollywood signal has been blown up in motion pictures, altered by pranksters to learn “Hollyweed,” “Jollygood” and “Hollyboob” and noticed Tom Cruise staple some Olympic rings on it to advertise the 2028 Video games in Los Angeles. Politicians have used it as a prop for commercials and mailers the best way they do kissing a child or consuming a taco. Out-of-town goobers and locals alike hike as much as varied vantage factors round it for a selfie or group shot.
However the crown for the worst stunt involving the monument to the whole lot dreamy and great about L.A. now lies with the Border Patrol.
Earlier this week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief in command of Trump’s lengthy, sizzling deportation summer season in L.A., posted on social media a photograph of him and dozens of his officers posing on a patch of grime in what appears like Lake Hollywood Park. Behind them is the Hollywood signal.
Arms are crossed. Fingers are on belts. A couple of Nationwide Guard troops, one with a K9 unit, take part. Not one of the faces are masked for as soon as. That’s as a result of they didn’t need to be: Virtually each considered one of them is blurred out.
“This is the team. They’re the ones on the ground, making it happen,” wrote Bovino, considered one of solely two within the photograph with no blurry face. “The mean green team is not going anywhere. We are here to stay.” And simply in case readers didn’t get that la migra is difficult, Bovino concluded his submit with a hearth emoji.
The faces of those supposedly courageous males are extra fuzzed out than Bigfoot in that well-known footage from 1967.
Jeff Zarrinnam, chairman of the nonprofit in command of sustaining the Hollywood signal, mentioned “we have to stay neutral on these types of things,” so he didn’t supply his opinion on why a person who spent his summer season terrorizing massive swaths of the Southland would need to pose there. He did say the Border Patrol didn’t request particular entry to get nearer to it as different politicians have up to now.
“It was probably a team-building effort for them, or a lot of them probably hadn’t seen it before,” he mentioned. “It’s a symbol of America. Maybe that’s why they were standing up there. Who knows?”
L.A. Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose district is the place the Hollywood signal stands, was not as charitable.
“To see an icon of this city used for an image designed to instill fear in Angelenos is chilling — particularly on the heels of Monday’s Supreme Court ruling which dealt a devastating blow to a city that has already faced so much hardship this year,” she mentioned in a press release.
Bovino is predicted to indicate up quickly in Chicago to supervise the Border Patrol’s invasion of the Windy Cindy. His press crew didn’t return my request for an interview or my questions on whether or not the photograph was digitally altered — apart from the face blurring and the ultra-sharp specializing in Bovino — and what he hoped to perform with it. The signal itself appears shrouded in fog, however who is aware of? The entire photograph has a weirdness about it.
Nonetheless, Bovino’s smirk within the group portrait says all of it.
That is the crew. They’re those on the bottom, making it occur. Those not afraid to place within the work. Each individual on this photograph is a part of our dedication to the mission. We don’t cease. We don’t decelerate. We hold urgent ahead.💪
The imply inexperienced crew shouldn’t be going… pic.twitter.com/hOZvSxSQr9
— Commander Op At Massive CA Gregory Okay. Bovino (@CMDROpAtLargeCA) September 9, 2025
He starred in slickly produced government-created movies portraying the Border Patrol as warriors on a divine mission to make the Metropolis of Angeles protected from immigrant infidels. He claimed native politicians have been endangering residents with their sanctuary insurance policies and gleefully thumbed his nostril at a brief restraining order barring indiscriminate raids like these, which the Supreme Courtroom simply dominated can begin occurring once more. He was there, a cameraman filming his each strut, when Nationwide Guard troops in armed Humvees parked alongside Whittier Boulevard in July all so Border Patrol brokers on horseback may trot by means of an empty MacArthur Park.
Supporters performed up his strikes as in the event that they have been a grasp class in psyops, with grandiose codenames corresponding to Operation Trojan Horse for the Penske truck raid and Operation Excalibur for the invasion of MacArthur Park. So Bovino and his janissaries posing in entrance of the Hollywood signal comes off like a hunter posing in entrance of his killed prey or a taunting postcard to L.A.: Fascinated with you. See you quickly.
However all of Bovino’s actions grabbed much more non-criminals than precise dangerous hombres and did nothing to make Southern California safer. Locals have countered his try at a shock-and-awe marketing campaign with lawsuits, protests, mutual support and neighborhood watches that gained’t finish. That resistance pressured la migra to cry to their daddy Trump for Nationwide Guard and Marine backup, with an occasional name to the LAPD and L.A. Sheriff’s Division to maintain away the boo birds who now observe their each transfer.
Greg: hope you loved your keep in L.A. Congrats — you made it! You’re the star of your individual D-level Tinseltown manufacturing that nobody besides pendejos desires to see. You left L.A. as one of the vital loathed outsiders since former Dodgers proprietor Frank McCourt. Keep gone. Want you weren’t right here.
