The "border czar" of the Trump administration, Tom Homan, announced this Sunday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will require its agents to use body cameras during all vehicle stops, as confirmed on the Fox & Friends Weekend program.
The announcement comes after two fatal shootings involving ICE agents within less than a week, in neither of which the officers were wearing body cameras, despite an internal directive requiring it since February 2025.
The first incident occurred on July 7 in Houston, Texas, where an officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican who had lived in the United States for over 35 years, father of three U.S. citizen children, who was driving a truck with construction workers and was not the target of the operation.
The second took place on July 13 in Biddeford, Maine: agent David Brouillette shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian with a valid work permit and the father of a three-year-old girl, who was also not the target of the operation.
In both cases, of what happened, igniting the controversy over the agency's use of force.
"Law enforcement officers are exonerated more often than they are convicted, and I want the officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the officers saw when they took that action," Homan stated.
Homan confirmed that the cameras have already been acquired and that instructors are being trained for their nationwide deployment, although he specified that the process was delayed due to federal government shutdowns that prevented contracts from being awarded on time.
The data contrasts with the magnitude of the existing deficit: in March 2026, the then acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, informed Congress that only about 3,000 of the 13,000 agents of the agency —less than a quarter of the total— were using body cameras, despite directive 19010.3, issued on February 19, 2025, already mandating their use during enforcement activities.
The institutional response in recent days has been swift and contradictory. On July 14, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suspended nearly all of ICE's vehicle stops to review protocols. Trump reversed that pause just 24 hours later, on July 15, expressing his displeasure with the decision.
On the same day, the Department of Homeland Security announced that each ICE arrest team would include at least one agent carrying an active camera, and that more than half of the regional offices had already received the equipment.
The updated ICE guide requires the use of cameras during street arrests, investigative detentions, execution of arrest warrants, searches, removals, protection of federal facilities, response to disturbances, and interactions with the public in the field.
Homan described the suspension of vehicle stops as "temporary" and assured that ICE will resume that practice once compliance with the new protocols is ensured.
DHS reported that the remaining regional offices that have not yet received equipment will obtain it within 60 days, while Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine demanded an independent investigation and the distribution of cameras within 45 days, by the end of August 2026.
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