Border Patrol takes a very weird photo featuring Hollywood sign

The Hollywood sign has been blown up in movies, altered by pranksters to read “Hollyweed,” “Jollygood” and “Hollyboob” and saw Tom Cruise staple some Olympic rings on it to promote the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

- GUSTAVO ARELLANO

CARLIN STIEHL Los Angeles Times

BORDER Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino in L.A. last month.

Politicians have used it as a prop for commercials and mailers the way they do kissing a baby or eating a taco. Out-of-town goobers and locals alike hike up to various vantage points around it for a selfie or group shot.

But the crown for the worst stunt involving the monument to everything dreamy and wonderful about L.A. now lies with the Border Patrol.

Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief in charge of Trump's long, hot deportation summer in L.A., posted on social media a photo of him and dozens of his officers posing on a patch of dirt in what looks like Lake Hollywood Park Behind them is the Hollywood sign.

Arms are crossed. Hands are on belts. A few National Guard troops, one with a K9 unit, join in. None of the faces are masked for once.

That's because they didn't have to be: Almost every one of them is blurred out.

"This is the team.

They're the ones on the ground, making it happen," wrote Bovino, one of only two in the photo without a blurry face. "The mean green team is not going anywhere. We are here to stay." And just in case readers didn't get that la migra is hard, Bovino concluded his post with a fire emoji.

The faces of these supposedly brave men are more fuzzed out than Bigfoot in that famous footage from 1967.

Jeff Zarrinnam, chairman of the nonprofit in charge of maintaining the Hollywood sign, said "we have to stay neutral on these types of things," so he didn't offer his opinion on why a man who spent his summer terrorizing large swaths of the Southland would want to pose there.

He did say the Border Patrol didn't request special access to get closer to it.