Federal immigration officers operating in Minneapolis will be issued body-worn cameras “effective immediately,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, after two fatal shootings by federal agents in the city fueled weeks of protests.
Noem said the change affects “every officer in the field” in Minneapolis across her department, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CPB), and the DHS would expand the program nationwide “as funding becomes available.”
Highlights
- DHS Secretary Kristi Noem mandates immediate body-camera use for all Minneapolis immigration officers amid protests over two fatal shootings.
- Despite officers wearing body cameras during Alex Pretti's shooting, footage remains unreleased amid legal and operational delays.
- President Donald Trump has supported bodycam use, saying cameras help because “people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
- DHS planned agency-wide body camera rollout by Sept 2025, but full implementation lags due to funding, training, and equipment gaps.
- ICE and CBP lack thousands of cameras needed to be able to allocate them to all agents.
Kristi Noem has said immigration agents in Minneapolis will wear bodycams 'effective immediately'
President Donald Trump backed the idea in broad terms, saying body cameras generally help law enforcement because “people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
The policy shift follows the deaths of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse, and Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, both of whom were killed last month during confrontations with federal agents involved in the administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.
In each case, Noem and the White House described the shootings as self-defense—claims that have been challenged by videos circulated online and by critics’ readings of what those videos show.
DHS has reportedly said at least four CBP officers at the scene of Pretti's shooting were wearing body cameras, but that footage has not been made public. An initial U.S. government review of the killing, meanwhile, made no mention of Pretti “brandishing” a firearm, despite earlier statements by Trump officials emphasizing a gun.
That led gun rights groups to demand a full investigation of the Pretti killing, after Trump and other senior administration officials suggested that his legally carrying a gun to a protest made him a legitimate target of authorities.
While both the Good and Pretti killings have raised questions about why cameras are not already standard equipment, the DHS is reportedly holding back footage from bodycams worn during the Pretti shooting amid legal wrangling over evidence.
Questions have been asked about why ICE and CBP don't already wear bodycams
The Minneapolis deployment, however, is not the start of a new body-camera policy. A DHS privacy impact assessment published in February 2024 said ICE was implementing a nationwide body-worn camera program “enterprise-wide” in phases and that full implementation was expected by September 30, 2025—while warning the date could shift depending on appropriated funding and unforeseen delays.
ICE then issued Directive 19010.3 in February 2025, setting out when officers should activate cameras during enforcement activity and how recordings are handled. But it explicitly acknowledged the program was not yet enterprise-wide, applying only in areas where cameras had already been implemented, and said enterprise-wide implementation depended on appropriated funding.
It is not clear why the DHS was unable to implement full camera use by its own deadline, despite receiving a massive injection of funding under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” in July 2025.
The directive also sketches how quickly footage should be released, including within 72 hours “or as soon as operationally feasible” if a serious bodily injury or death occurs, while allowing the agency to withhold or indefinitely delay release in the event of “specific and compelling circumstances.”
Outside the Minneapolis spotlight, the rollout appears to have lagged unevenly by region and unit. According to a report from NPR, body-worn cameras had not been implemented for officers out of the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office in St. Paul due, in part, to shortages and training hurdles.
According to the Washington Post, ICE has about 4,400 body cameras for roughly 22,000 employees, while CBP has 14,400 cameras for more than 45,000 officers—leaving the department short of enough devices for universal deployment without a major purchase and training push.