ICE is lying about body cams. These documents prove it.

"As soon as they had funding they bought them"

On July 13, Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old from Colombia who was legally authorized to work in the US, was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims Durán Guerrero “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.” Durán Guerrero was not the target of the enforcement action and none of the ICE officers involved were using body cams.

Durán Guerrero was the eighth person killed in federal immigration enforcement actions during the current Trump administration. In only one instance were federal immigration officers wearing a body cam.

Why are ICE officers not equipped with body cams?

Shortly after Durán Guerrero was killed, DHS blamed Democrats. According to a DHS statement the “process of purchasing and issuing body-worn cameras to all of our ICE field offices was interrupted by the Democrats’ multiple government shutdowns.”

On July 14, answering questions from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, White House Border Czar Tom Homan had a similar message:

COLLINS: Why were the ICE agents not wearing body cameras in Houston or in Maine during these two incidents?

TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: Good question. I -- you know, when the Democrats shut down the Department of Homeland Security… There was a $120 million in the budget they were holding up to buy those body cameras.

…

COLLINS: That funding was approved in April for body cameras, $20 million I believe. So why has that not been distributed? And will these arrests now--

HOMAN: Cameras were bought. One of the first things I did in Minnesota is bring hundreds of cameras to Minnesota that were recently purchased. But there wasn’t [sic] the cameras to -- to outfit every ICE agent. I was waiting for more money… As soon as they had funding they bought them. If Democrats wouldn’t have shut down the government it would have been a lot quicker.

Homan repeated that line — “As soon as they had funding they bought them” — twice, for emphasis.

Not only did ICE not purchase the body cams “as soon as they had funding,” but ICE had not purchased the body cams at the time of Homan’s statements, according to government contracting documents unearthed by Popular Information. On July 17 and July 20 — days after the Homan interview — a division of ICE, the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, issued two delivery orders for $30.9 million of body cams.

Between April 30, when Trump signed the DHS appropriations bill with $20 million in funding specifically for body cams, and July 17, DHS had spent just $75,000 on new body cams. The more recent order for over $30 million of body cams shows that was a nominal sum far below ICE’s actual needs.

Moreover, ICE did not need additional funding in April to purchase body cams. On July 4, 2025, Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which provided ICE with $75 billion in additional funding — with few restrictions. Since then, ICE has been sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent funds. The government shutdowns cited by Homan had no impact on these funds. The contracting authority to purchase up to $100 million in body cams from Axon Enterprise has existed since 2023.

Since February 2025, it has been the official policy of ICE for law enforcement officers to wear body cams “to collect audio and video recordings of interactions with the public during Enforcement Activities.” But the policy was contingent on body cams being “issued enterprise-wide.”

They were not issued. In February 2026, months after ICE’s $75 billion windfall, Acting Director Todd Lyons said that only 3,000 of ICE’s 13,000 officers wore body cams. ICE was avoiding compliance with the policy by simply not ordering many body cams.

Now, after many deadly unrecorded incidents, the body cams have finally been ordered. Will the body cams actually be distributed to ICE officers and used? Time will tell.

Two unrecorded ICE killings in six days

Durán Guerrero was the second unrecorded killing by an ICE officer in less than a week.

On July 7, an ICE officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston father of three who worked in the US for 35 years. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims that Salgado Araujo, who had no criminal record, “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

The DHS account is similar to the justification provided by the Trump administration for the January 7 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. DHS described Good as a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them—an act of domestic terrorism.” The ICE officer, DHS said, “fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots.” President Trump said Good “ran him over.”

In Good’s case, none of the ICE officers involved were using a body cam, but bystander video directly contradicted the DHS account. None of the ICE officers at the scene of Salgado Araujo’s killing were using body cams either, but no clear photos or videos of the incident have emerged.