The Trump administration will issue body cameras to all federal officers in Minneapolis, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday.
Noem said that body-worn cameras would become available for all Department of Homeland Security law enforcement as funding allows. The announcement on X came after a conversation with border czar Tom Homan and the top leaders at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
“Effective immediately, we are deploying body cameras to every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” Noem said. “As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country.”
Responding to Noem’s announcement, President Donald Trump told reporters it wasn’t his decision but that he was OK with it.
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“They generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening, so it’s generally speaking, I think 80% good for law enforcement,” Trump said Monday.
Democrats are demanding immigration agents use body cameras, stop wearing masks that obscure their faces and carry identification as part of the DHS funding battle that led to the ongoing partial government shutdown.
The announcement comes after mounting backlash following a pair of fatal shootings in Minneapolis involving federal agents. Gov. Tim Walz said all federal agents should have had body cameras before the killings.
“Border patrol agents should never have been sent in masks and camo to wreak havoc and aimlessly run around a state 1,500 miles from the Southern border,” Walz said in a statement on X Monday.
Homeland Security investigators are reviewing body camera footage of the moment Border Patrol officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, on Jan. 24, according to NBC News. The footage has not been released to the public.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday that the FBI and Department of Justice were conducting a civil rights probe into Pretti’s death. The two officers who shot him were placed on administrative leave per standard protocol, a CBP spokesperson said last week.
The ICE agent who shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 filmed the incident on a phone while he held his gun with his other hand. Alpha News, a Minnesota-based conservative news site, first published the video days after the killing that ICE agent Jonathan Ross captured.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for details about the announcement.
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