ICE rejects suggestion that its officers wear body cameras that automatically activate

Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ensure body-worn cameras are activated when needed, suggesting automatic activation in certain situations WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal immigration officials need to ensure that body cameras worn by officers are uniformly activated when needed, a government report released Wednesday said, following a series of contentious shootings and aggressive arrests by ICE officers.The agency rejected the recommendation, saying that using cameras that automatically activate when an officer pulls their weapon or activates a car siren could risk privacy concerns.ICE has come under intense scrutiny after numerous incidents where officers have opened fire during enforcement operations and the agency has claimed they were under threat but officers weren't wearing body cameras. Critics say the cameras could help hold officers accountable and promote transparency at a time when the agency is operating at a high tempo across the country and increasingly accused of excessive use of force.

The report by the Government Accountability Office covers the period from February 2025 until September of this year. The report, conducted at the request of Democratic members of Congress, delves into policies governing the use of body-worn cameras by ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and details improvements both agencies can make to improve their programs.

But it did not go into any of the high-profile ICE-involved shootings that have focused attention on the agency’s body-worn camera usage, such as the shooting deaths of Renee Good in Minneapolis or Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.A fatal shooting exposed gaps in ICE’s camera rolloutFormer Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in February that every Homeland Security officer on the ground in Minneapolis would be issued body-worn cameras. Noem, who was later fired by Trump, said officers across the country would receive them as funds became available.The department later received $20 million from Congress to finish the ICE body-camera rollout plan. But then came a shooting in July of Salgado Araujo, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed the Mexican man who lived in the U.S.

Those officers were not wearing body cameras, raising questions about why the agency still hadn't gotten the cameras out to officers in the field. Homeland Security said after Salgado Araujo’s death that body cameras had been deployed to more than half of ICE field offices and that the remainder would get… The agency rejected the recommendation, saying that using cameras that automatically activate when an officer pulls their weapon or activates a car siren could risk privacy concerns.

ICE has come under intense scrutiny after numerous incidents where officers have opened fire during enforcement operations and the agency has claimed they were under threat but officers weren’t wearing body cameras. A fatal shooting exposed gaps in ICE’s camera rollout Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced in February that every Homeland Security officer on the ground in Minneapolis would be issued body-worn cameras. The department later received $20 million from Congress to finish the ICE body-camera rollout plan.