Homan backs ICE body cameras after fatal shootings

White House border czar Tom Homan said federal immigration officers should wear body cameras after ICE agents fatally shot two men during vehicle stops in Texas and Maine this month, incidents that have drawn new scrutiny of the agency’s tactics and its slow camera rollout.

“I think body cameras are the way to go,” Homan said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “I think body cameras let the American people know what that officer sees when he takes that action.”

Homan also said on Fox & Friends Weekend that ICE will require officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera. “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,” he said.

On July 7, an ICE officer in Houston fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the United States for decades. Six days later, an ICE officer fatally shot Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian driver, in Biddeford, Maine, about 15 miles south of Portland. In both cases, the immigration personnel involved were not wearing body cameras, and the Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged that neither man was the intended target of the operations.

Salgado was driving his construction crew to a job site when he was pursued and stopped, The Guardian reported. His family has said he had no criminal history, had lived in the U.S. for 35 years and was close to obtaining legal status. Immigrant rights activists have said Durán was authorized to work in the U.S. and had a Social Security number. DHS has said officers feared for their safety.

The shootings prompted protests in Maine, Houston and Boston and raised questions about why ICE agents lacked body cameras. Homan said last week the agency would temporarily suspend most vehicle stops nationwide to review procedures, but President Donald Trump directed federal immigration agents to resume them within 24 hours, The Guardian reported. CBS News reported that Trump overturned the suspension Wednesday.

DHS announced last week that every ICE arrest team will have at least one officer equipped with a camera going forward. The department said after the Houston shooting that body cameras had been deployed to more than half of ICE’s field offices, with the remaining offices set to receive them within 60 days.

Homan said Sunday that funding delays slowed the rollout. “Everybody in ICE would have a camera now if the government wasn’t shut down by Democratic members of Congress,” he said, referring to negotiations during a partial DHS shutdown earlier this year. “There was money in that bill that they held up.”

Democrats had refused to fund the department while seeking immigration enforcement reforms after two deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. They later approved funding for the rest of the department in April, including $20 million for body cameras. Republicans subsequently approved a roughly $70 billion package to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the end of the Trump administration.

Democratic lawmakers have criticized DHS’s pace, citing the money approved in April and the broader funding bill passed last year. Homan said the $20 million “wasn’t enough,” adding: “The cameras have been purchased, right now they’re training the trainer in deploying the cameras nationwide.”

ICE launched a body-camera pilot program in 2024 and deployed cameras in Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, The Guardian reported. Reuters reported in January that the Trump administration had moved last year to slow the program by urging Congress to cut funding by 75%.

Homan said the investigations into the Texas and Maine shootings should proceed. He also warned against rhetoric encouraging people to resist ICE. “No matter what people think of ICE, no matter what you think of immigration law, you should always comply with law enforcement,” he said.