ICE will require body cameras during vehicle stops, Homan says

Cameras purchased, training underway for nationwide rollout

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will require officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera, Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, said Sunday on Fox & Friends Weekend. The announcement came after ICE officers fatally shot two men six days apart earlier this month — Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on July 7 and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13 — during traffic stops that drew scrutiny from lawmakers and immigrant rights groups.

“They exonerate more law enforcement than they convict, and I want officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action,” Homan said. In a separate interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, he said the cameras have been purchased and that the agency is training trainers to deploy them nationwide. Homan added that funding for the cameras had been held up during the partial government shutdown earlier this year.

Neither of the recent fatal encounters produced body-camera footage. Less than a week after the shootings, Homan said last week that ICE would temporarily suspend most vehicle stops to review procedures, but President Donald Trump directed the agency to resume them within 24 hours. The back-to-back killings prompted protests in Maine, Houston and Boston.

ICE launched a body-camera pilot program in 2024, deploying cameras to officers in Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington. The Trump administration moved last year to slow-walk the initiative, urging Congress to cut funding by 75%, Reuters reported in January. In February, after the killing of two U.S. citizens during an immigration crackdown in Minnesota, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the program would be rolled out nationwide “as funding is available.”

Durán’s death was the 11th fatal shooting by federal immigration officials since Trump’s second term began, according to a Guardian review of public reports. Separately, FBI agents will no longer investigate confrontations with ICE agents, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the decision. Written notice of the change was sent Thursday.

Salgado, a Mexican national who had lived in the United States for 35 years and had no criminal history, was driving a construction crew to a job site when he was pursued and stopped. He was not the intended target of the ICE operation, the Department of Homeland Security has said. His family said he was close to obtaining legal status. Durán, a Colombian national, was also not the target of the operation; DHS said officers feared for their safety. Immigrant rights activists said Durán was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a social security number.