Immigration enforcement agents will have to record vehicle stops on at least one body-worn camera “whenever possible,” Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Sunday, following two deadly shootings in Texas and Maine this month.
“They exonerate more law enforcement than they convict, and I want officers to wear body cameras,” Homan said Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.” “I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action.”
Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered agents to pause making vehicle stops during most enforcement actions, but quickly reversed course after President Donald Trump said Wednesday the agency wouldn’t stop one of its “most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.”
The moves came after ICE agents shot and killed two people in separate traffic stops. An agent shot Mexican national Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7. The Department of Homeland Security said Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle,” a statement his family has disputed.
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Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national, was shot and killed while in his car by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13. DHS said in a statement that the agent who shot him was “fearing for public safety” but did not explain more.
Homan said Sunday that the rollout of body cameras for ICE agents was delayed because
Democrats blocked funding for immigration enforcement agencies during the 76-day partial government shutdown this year.
“Everybody in ICE would have a camera now if the government wasn’t shut down by Democratic members of Congress,” Homan said. “There was money in that bill that they held up.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, disputed the contention that the shutdown played any role in outfitting agents with body cameras. A Republican tax and spending bill passed in 2025 included nearly $30 billion for ICE.
“This administration instead blew tax dollars on private jets and new souped-up, gold-coated SUVs that the agency cannot even use,” Murray told HuffPost in a statement last week. “The idea that Democrats are to blame for the Trump administration’s failure to deploy body cameras to the field and to protect people from out-of-control agents that they have failed to properly train is completely absurd.”
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced in February that the Trump administration planned to issue body cameras to all federal officers in Minneapolis following the deadly shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officials.
“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 wrote in an announcement posted to X at the time. That was before the lengthy partial government shutdown began.
In addition to the billions for ICE passed last year, Congress appropriated $20 million “for the procurement, deployment, and operations of body-worn cameras for agents and officers performing enforcement activities” April 30.
Only half of ICE field offices have the cameras, but all field offices are expected to get the new gear within 60 days, according to Axios.
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