WASHINGTON — Zero. That is how many reprimands ICE issued to its officers for breaking body-camera rules from the start of its program through September 2025. This week, the Trump administration rejected the watchdog’s call for technology that would turn those cameras on automatically when an officer draws a weapon or hits the siren.
The Government Accountability Office report, dated Sept. 15, was made public Oct. 14. It finds that ICE lacks “reasonable assurance” that its officers record when policy says they must. The report lands in a year of immigration-agent shootings in which the video either never existed or has not been shown to the public. For a migrant on the wrong end of an ICE gun, a camera is often the only witness without a badge.
The fix is already in the box
Border Patrol’s parent agency, CBP, already uses automated triggers. Its cameras start recording when a firearm is drawn or emergency lights come on. ICE uses the same vendor’s cameras. DHS’s own Science and Technology office tested the auto-activation feature, and the Axon cameras met evaluators’ expectations, according to the report.
ICE relies on officers pressing a button and on supervisors checking up on them. GAO found the supervisors can’t keep up. Program officials told auditors it would not be “reasonable to expect” a supervisor to confirm every camera was activated. They cited the volume of footage, and case-management systems that don’t talk to the video system.
DHS agreed with six of GAO’s seven recommendations. It rejected only the one that would take the decision out of officers’ hands. In an Aug. 28 letter, DHS warned that auto-activation could capture informants, victims, or bystanders “engaged in protected First Amendment activities.” It concluded that the “privacy, evidentiary, and operational risks associated with automatic activation technology outweigh its potential benefits,” and asked GAO to close the matter.
GAO refused. Auditors noted that DHS did not identify a single setting where auto-activation could work, and did not propose any other control to catch missed recordings. “We maintain that additional controls are needed,” the report says.
ICE’s own directive already bars officers from recording peaceful protests. Under the technology GAO describes, the camera wakes up when a gun leaves its holster.
‘Up to interpretation’
At six of the 10 field sites GAO visited, CBP and ICE personnel said they weren’t sure when they were required to record. Officers described camera use as “not mandated,” “up to interpretation,” and having “gray areas.” They named vehicle searches, detainee transports, in-custody interviews and subpoena service as the confusing cases.
At one ICE location, personnel had received cameras and completed training but had not started using them, because no one could tell them when to.
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, which holds about half the agency’s cameras, has no field handbook. Officials told GAO they stopped dedicating resources to one when deployment paused. DHS now promises it by June 30, 2027.
A plan written for a smaller ICE
ICE’s camera plan dates to 2024. It calls for about 10,500 cameras by fiscal 2030. Since then, ICE launched a hiring surge of roughly 12,000 personnel in July 2025, and officials say every officer, including future hires, will get a camera. The plan’s numbers have barely moved.
Deployment stopped entirely in June 2025, months after President Donald Trump rescinded the Biden executive order directing federal agencies to require cameras. DHS kept the camera policies on the books. The components chose not to fund the program offices that carry them out. As of April 2026, ICE had about 4,800 cameras in the field.
DHS now says “ICE has acquired devices to equip all ICE officers and agents nationwide with body cameras.” Its letter to GAO says every field office had equipment as of Aug. 5, and training is underway. Congress set aside $20 million for cameras in April.
The year the cameras weren’t there
This report covers a year of shootings. After two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis in January, then-Secretary Kristi Noem ordered cameras for every federal officer there and promised a nationwide rollout as funding allowed. In March, then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told lawmakers roughly 3,000 of about 13,000 ICE agents wore cameras.
In July, ICE officers in Houston who killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in his work van had neither body cameras nor dash cameras. Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, officers without cameras shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old from Colombia. “Body cameras were not on the agents,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told reporters that day. Another shooting followed in Austin in September.
When footage does exist, it can rewrite the government’s story. In Chicago, a federal judge in February ordered the release of bodycam video in the shooting of Marimar Martinez, and it contradicted the government’s account of the collision.
The report was requested by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.; Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif.; Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich.; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md. Thompson, the top Democrat on House Homeland Security, said the program “is deficient and needs to be revamped”.
Then came the Bronx. On Oct. 8, an ICE officer fired seven rounds at Oscar Belgal, 28, as he pulled forward in his car, with his 5-year-old son in the back seat. Mullin said the officers’ cameras were rolling and captured the shooting. Asked whether ICE would release the footage, Mullin said, “I’m sure it will be.” Eight days later, the public has not seen a frame.
DHS told Congress’s watchdog to close the file on ICE’s cameras. Migrant Insider won’t. Paid subscribers fund the FOIA requests that pry this footage loose, so join us and send this to someone who thinks the cameras are already on.
F ICE
The police operate the same way. Camera footage only survives if it helps them, otherwise it just magically disappears…