The Secretary of Homeland Security, announced this Monday that all immigration agents deployed in Minneapolis will wear body cameras. The measure comes after the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the two American citizens who were shot by agents sent to Minnesota by the Donald Trump Government as part of a huge immigration operation across the country.
“Effective immediately, we are equipping all officers serving in Minneapolis with body cameras. As funding becomes available, the body camera program will expand nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and distribute body cameras to Department of Homeland Security law enforcement nationwide,” on his X account. “The most transparent Administration in American history,” he added.
The Department of Homeland Security (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), under which the Border Patrol operates. Therefore, the more than 3,000 agents of these three forces on the ground in Minneapolis will begin to carry cameras as part of their equipment.
Migrant advocacy organizations have always argued that these types of cameras are necessary to increase transparency in interactions between immigration police and the civilian population. Those calls have only multiplied in the last month after an ICE agent shot and killed Good during an operation on January 7 and two other Border Patrol agents shot Pretti to death in the same way on the 24th.
Proponents of the measure — which many local police departments across the country have implemented — argue that body cameras are crucial to monitoring the behavior of officers during their operations. They also serve to deter officers from committing misconduct. Following Pretti’s murder, investigators have begun reviewing more than 30 body cameras worn by officers present that day to piece together what happened before his death.
Cameras also serve to. In the case of the deaths of Pretti and Good, Trump Administration officials accused them of provoking the confrontations that ended their lives. This despite the fact that videos recorded by witnesses contradict both official versions. After the two murders, the images recorded by people in the street, which have gone viral on social networks, have served as visual proof of the abusive use of force by the agents involved in both shootings.
The use of body cameras is one of the points in reaching an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security after the Government entered a partial shutdown on Saturday. Senate Democrats last week opposed funding the department if Trump did not commit to imposing limits on ICE and CBP agents.
Finally, the Senate reached a financing agreement that, in turn, extended the financing of the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks, a period in which the two parties must reach an agreement on the new rules that they will impose on agents. Meanwhile, negotiations continue in the House of Representatives to approve the budget package to reopen the federal Administration.
Both Democrats and Republicans support the body camera measure. Trump himself came out in favor of it over the weekend. “I think they would help law enforcement, but I would have to talk to them,” the president said when asked by the press.
President Joe Biden ordered federal officers to wear body cameras in 2022 as part of an executive order that included other police reform measures. Trump, however, revoked that decree at the beginning of his second term. His Administration also stopped a pilot program aimed at providing ICE agents with body cameras by urging Congress to cut its funding by 75%, according to a Reuters report last week.
