Federal immigration officers in Minneapolis will start wearing body cameras “effective immediately,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said Monday.
“As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide,” said Noem in a post on X. “We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country.”
The decision to equip federal agents in Minneapolis with body cameras comes after federal agents in the metropolitan area shot and killed two people, Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Both shootings were caught on camera by bystanders.
Noem praised the move to deploy body cameras as part of “the most transparent administration in American history.”
Many Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents are not currently equipped with body cameras. While at least some of the officers involved in the killing of Pretti were wearing body cameras, the footage from which DHS has said it is preserving, the officers at the scene of Good’s killing did not appear to be wearing body cameras. Data compiled in June 2025 showed ICE had 22,000 employees and 4,400 cameras, and Customs and Border Protection had 13,400 cameras with at least 45,000 armed officers.
The Trump administration proposed large cuts to ICE’s body-camera program for this fiscal year, and the White House called attempts to add a requirement to a budget bill that ICE agents wear body cameras one of “many unserious poison pill demands” from Democrats.
President Donald Trump said at a news conference Monday that he believes body cameras “generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
Trump added that the decision to deploy body cameras was not his and that he leaves such decisions to Noem.
“If she wants to do the camera thing, that’s okay with me,” he said.
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