ICE to outfit officers with body cameras by September

ICE can release body camera footage only when in its ‘best interests’

ICE moving to body cameras nationwide, with policy reserving power over release

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to equip its field officers with body cameras in the next two months, but the agency’s policy gives it broad control over what footage will be made public by specifying any releases must be in its “best interests.”

After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have intensified pressure for accountability that the cameras could provide, the agency said.

But the agency’s body-worn camera policy could mean taxpayers who are pitching in tens of millions of dollars to pay for the cameras may be kept in the dark about some high-profile confrontations, at least in their immediate aftermath, the Associated Press reported.

The policy says ICE will promptly release video of shootings and other encounters in which its agents cause death or serious injury only after determining “it is in the best interests of the agency” to do so. That gives its director discretion to release recordings that reflect well on the agency’s image while working to keep others secret, according to experts who study body camera policies.

Such selective releases are routine in some law enforcement agencies but usually not so clearly contemplated in policy, said Christopher Schneider, a professor at Brandon University in Canada and a co-author of the book “Police Body-Worn Cameras: Media and the New Discourse of Police Reform.”

“In some ways, ICE is saying the quiet part out loud,” Schneider said. “Body-worn cameras are being used as contemporary image-work tools to present the police to the public in the most favorable way possible.”

MSI previously reported that Tom Homan said ICE would require body cameras during vehicle stops after two fatal shootings in July, and that half of ICE field offices still lacked body cameras weeks after those encounters. The September deadline and the new release policy mark the next step in that promised rollout.