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.
Clips of the scene made public so far do not show him pointing his gun at officers.
Precise, moment-by-moment evidence can prove crucial in use-of-force investigations, and questions continue to swirl around the Texas and Maine shootings.
In Houston, an agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national, as officers tailed his van in unmarked vehicles in an operation targeting someone else. Salgado Araujo’s brother, who was in the van, claims they were unaware law enforcement was chasing them.
ICE claims an agent fired in self-defense after Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle.”
In Monday’s shooting in Biddeford, Maine, in which an ICE agent killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old father with work authorization, the encounter began with what ICE said was targeted surveillance on a home thought to be the last known residence of an illegal immigrant.
Sebastian Guerrero was not the target of the warrant, Senator King’s office has said, citing conversations with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
A verified bystander video of the shooting shows a white vehicle appearing to ram a smaller white car that was slowly turning in a circle while at an intersection.
A witness told Reuters he heard the victim tell law enforcement, “I tried to stop.”
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon,” DHS said in a statement.
In the wake of the shootings, the Trump administration has reportedly ordered a “short-term pause” in traffic stops during immigration operations.
The killing in Maine marks at least the 11th fatal shooting involving federal immigration agents since the beginning of the second Trump administration.
