Homeland Security got $20M for body cameras. So why weren’t ICE agents wearing them in Maine and Texas shootings?
In the days after federal officers killed two protesters in Minnesota in January, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed that agents nationwide would soon be equipped with body-worn cameras. Then, in April, DHS got another $20 million to get the cameras out in the field.
Three months later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers responsible for fatal shootings in Maine this week and in Texas last week still were not equipped with body cameras, according to officials.
Critics across the country were outraged by the delay.
“ICE is out of control,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia, Democrat of Texas, wrote on X on Tuesday. “In less than a week, ICE agents have shot and killed two people. In both cases the victims were not the intended target, and the agents were not wearing body cameras.”
“They’ve got tons of money. Why they don’t have body cams I think is a very fair question,” independent Sen. Angus King of Maine told CNN on Monday. “That would resolve this kind of factual issue that we’re going to be trying to resolve over the next several weeks here in Maine.”
“It’s hard to see any more excuses for why there’s a delay,” former Acting ICE Director John Sandweg told WGME. “Certainly, it’s not money. ICE has never been better funded.”
The Department of Homeland Security and its Republican allies have pinned the blame on recent partisan government shutdowns.
“The officers involved in the incident in Maine had not been issued body-worn cameras due to back-to-back Democrat shutdowns,” DHS told The Independent in a statement.
“The process of purchasing and issuing body-worn cameras to all of our ICE field offices was interrupted by the Democrats’ multiple government shutdowns,” the agency added. “Body cameras have been deployed to more than half the field offices with the remaining half to receive them in the next 60 days.”
The Independent has contacted ICE for comment.
The need for such cameras is especially pressing, according to critics, because Trump administration officials have made inaccurate and at times false claims in the immediate aftermath of past shootings.
“Even if the government is telling the truth, however, most Americans no longer give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote on Monday. “DHS has made these situations more combustible by squandering credibility in previous cases when force was used.”
When an agent killed Renee Good in Minnesota, Noem misleadingly claimed the woman used her car as a weapon against agents in an apparent act of domestic terrorism, when video appeared to show her trying to turn away from agents and leave the scene.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed the second slain protester in Minnesota, Alex Pretti, “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement,” while Noem said he was “brandishing” a weapon. Video of the scene shows Pretti using a phone to record officers, and appears to show agents removing Pretti’s legally permitted firearm before agents shot and killed him.
