Federal Immigration Agents Will Be Issued Body Cameras, Noem Pledges Amid Backlash

Body-worn cameras are being issued to federal agents in Minneapolis and will be provided to officers around the U.S. when funding is available, the Trump Administration announced, following a push from Democrats and expressions of support from some Republicans as the Administration’s immigration crackdown draws widespread outcry.

“Effective immediately we are deploying body cameras to every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X on Monday. 

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“As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country,” Noem added. She said that she had spoken with White House border czar Tom Homan, who is overseeing federal immigration operations in the Minnesota city; Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons; and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott. 

Democratic leaders have named requiring officers to wear body cameras as one of their demands to be included in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill in their push for reforms following the fatal shootings of two people by federal agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks. Some Republican lawmakers have backed such a mandate, while opposing other changes their Democratic counterparts have pushed for.

“I don’t have a problem with that personally,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a member of the upper chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” this weekend.

President Donald Trump on Monday also signaled his backing for officers wearing body cameras, saying, “It tends to be good for law enforcement, because people can’t lie about what happened.” But he said deploying the cameras to agents in Minneapolis “wasn’t my decision” and that he would “leave it” to Noem.

Read more: ‘ICE Out’ Gains Momentum as Cities Across the Country Take Action

The Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operations have faced fierce backlash across the U.S. after federal agents killed Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti within less than three weeks of one another last month. Amid the outcry, funding for DHS—which houses Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—has become the center of a standoff that has partially shut down the government after appropriations for multiple agencies expired after midnight on Friday.

The Administration has defended federal agents’ actions in both Good and Pretti’s shootings as “self defense.” But video of both incidents contradicts federal officials’ accounts.

Democratic lawmakers have refused to approve an annual appropriations bill for DHS unless significant reforms are included.

In addition to a requirement for officers to wear body cameras, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week that Democrats would demand that agents be prohibited from wearing masks and be required to carry proper identification, that roving patrols in Minneapolis stop, that agents be mandated to obtain a judicial warrant before entering people’s homes, and that a code of conduct governing agents’ use of force be established. Schumer called these requirements “commonsense reforms.”

“If Republicans refuse to support them, they are choosing chaos over order, plain and simple,” Schumer said when outlining the demands. 

Read more: To End Shutdown, Trump Seeks to Muscle Funding Deal Through a Fractured House

Senate Democrats and Trump agreed to a deal late last week that would pass spending bills funding wide swaths of the government for the rest of the fiscal year and buy two additional weeks to negotiate DHS funding. The Senate passed the bipartisan package on Friday, but with the House out of session, the government entered a partial shutdown hours later.

The shutdown is set to continue until at least Tuesday, as a final vote in the House is not expected to happen until then at the earliest. 

It remains to be seen if Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to pass the procedural rule necessary to bring the funding bill to the floor and then garner enough GOP support for the bill to pass in the chamber, which Republicans control by an extremely thin majority.