ICE officers to wear body cameras during vehicle stops, border czar says

July 19 (Reuters) - In the wake of multiple fatal shootings involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the agency will require its officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera, Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Sunday.

“They exonerate more law enforcement than they convict, and I want officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,” Homan said on the "Fox & Friends Weekend” program.

Homan’s comments come after federal immigration agents fatally shot two men six ​days apart during traffic stops in Texas and Maine earlier this month. There is no body-camera footage from ICE agents involved in those incidents.

In a separate interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" show, Homan said money for the cameras was held up during the partial government shutdown earlier this year.

"The cameras have been purchased right now," Homan said. "They're training the trainer in deploying the cameras nationwide."

TRAFFIC STOPS RESUME

The agency's tactics came under ⁠renewed public scrutiny in recent days after an ICE officer on July 13 killed a driver from Colombia in the coastal Maine town of Biddeford, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Portland. Six ​days earlier, another ICE officer in Houston fatally shot a Mexican national. 

Homan said last week the agency would temporarily suspend most vehicle stops around the country to review procedures. Within 24 hours of Homan’s comments, U.S. President ​Donald Trump directed federal immigration agents to resume them.

The back-to-back shootings sparked protests in Maine, Houston ​and Boston and raised questions over ICE agents' lack of body cameras.

ICE launched a body-camera pilot program in 2024 and deployed cameras to officers in five cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

The Trump administration moved last year to slow-walk the program, urging Congress to cut funding by 75%, Reuters reported in January. 

In February, after the killing of two U.S. citizens during an immigration crackdown in Minnesota, then U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem said the body camera program would be rolled out to ICE agents nationwide “as funding is available.”