By Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has resisted efforts to expand the use of body cameras by immigration officers and sharply cut surveillance staff while transferring officers to Minneapolis and other cities, leading to a series of violent clashes.
Bystander footage of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizen protesters, including Saturday’s incident that left an ICU nurse dead, underscored the power of video in verifying official statements that portrayed the people who were shot as provoking violent encounters with immigration officers.
Because of this, officer-worn body cameras have been central to police reform efforts. The Trump administration, however, moved last year to slow a pilot program to give ICE officers body cameras, prompting Congress in June to cut funding by 75 percent and bucking the nationwide trend of cameras for law enforcement.
Officials also last year placed nearly all employees working for three domestic watchdogs that oversee immigration agencies on paid leave, undermining their ability to investigate abuses.
Darius Reeves, who was director of ICE’s Baltimore field office until August, said the rollout of a body camera pilot program was slow in 2024 under President Biden, a Democrat, and “died on the vine” under Trump, a Republican.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said ICE officers “act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities.”
“Anyone who points the finger at law enforcement officers instead of criminals is simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens,” she said.
At least three of the eight or more Border Patrol agents at the scene of Saturday’s shooting were wearing body cameras, a Reuters image of verified video showed. Reuters could not determine whether the cameras were activated or whether any agents involved in the physical encounter were wearing them.
EFFORTS TO REDUCE ICE BODY-CAM FUNDING
When ICE or the Border Patrol have engaged in acts of violence — including the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis — senior Trump officials have been quick to label the dead as perpetrators rather than demand thorough investigations.
Trump began ramping up immigration enforcement this year after congressional Republicans passed a $170 billion enforcement bill last year, a major funding boost expected to transform how ICE and the Border Patrol operate.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and “assassin” in social media posts hours after he was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent.
The shooting has galvanized some Democratic senators who say they will oppose a spending bill to fund the US Department of Homeland Security unless it curbs immigration enforcement.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection — the parent agency of the Border Patrol — had 13,400 cameras for about 45,000 officers as of June, according to a congressional aide.
ICE launched a body camera pilot program in 2024 and installed cameras on officers in five cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, DC
While the Trump administration kept the program, it asked Congress to freeze its expansion and cut funding to run it in its fiscal year 2026 budget request.
The proposal called for keeping ICE’s 4,200 body-worn cameras, but reducing the 22-person staff to three employees and running the program in a more “streamlined” approach.
DHS says there are about 22,000 ICE officers, but a federal workforce database suggests the figure is lower.
A national security spending bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last week rejected that proposal, instead providing $20 million for ICE and Border Patrol cameras.
However, the bill — now facing a difficult path through the US Senate — did not require any agency to use the devices.
Scott Shuchart, a top ICE official under Biden, said officers do not bring the cameras with them when they are detailed to other locations outside their normal operating area, an issue that has become more relevant as officers have been transferred to cities across the country.
DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
UNANSWERED COMPLAINTS LIKE CUTTING SUPERVISORY STAFF
The Trump administration placed about 300 workers in three separate DHS oversight offices on paid leave beginning in 2025 as it reassigned thousands of federal agents across the government to support the crackdown, a move that drew criticism from Democrats and civil rights groups.
A lawsuit over the cuts claims the Trump administration effectively eliminated the offices, which only Congress would be authorized to do, and left no way to address abuses.
In May, a career federal employee, Ronald Sartini, was charged with top jobs at three of the watchdog offices, including the one that handled allegations of abuse in immigration detention.
As of December, there were only a few employees in the office. The Office of the Ombudsman for Immigration Detention had three full-time and two part-time employees, up from more than a hundred in March.
In 2023, OIDO received more than 11,000 complaints in person and received 282 complaints through its web portal, court documents show. Between March and December 2025, OIDO received a total of 285 complaints, court documents show.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Fernando Robles in Mexico City; Editing by Craig Timberg and Nick Zieminski)