Within a month, body-worn cameras will be deployed nationwide and worn by all Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the field, Sen. Susan Collins said.
Collins, R-Maine, met Thursday with acting ICE Director David Venturella to press him for details about the deployment of body cameras following the July 13 shooting death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford at the hands of an immigration officer.
Immediately after the shooting, ICE said it only had enough cameras to deploy them to about half of its officers, and they had not been issued to the officers who were involved in the Biddeford stop.
Some ICE officials in Maine already have cameras though, Collins’ staff was told by the Department of Homeland Security, and the agency said that going forward, it will use those cameras to comply with a new ICE rule that requires there to be someone wearing a body camera during any enforcement interaction.
Remaining agents will be outfitted with cameras by the end of August.
“At my request, Acting Director Venturella agreed to prioritize their delivery to Maine,” Collins said in a statement to the Press Herald after the meeting.
The cameras have been ordered with funding Collins said she secured in the bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security this year. The bill was signed April 30 when the latest government shutdown ended. Collins and members of the Trump administration have blamed the government shutdown in the spring for the delay in distributing the cameras, which government spending data show were ordered in July.
The day after the shooting in Biddeford, Collins said it was “extremely unfortunate that the agent involved did not have a body-worn camera.”
The lack of body camera footage is important because no video has emerged to show the shooting in Biddeford. Footage recorded by nearby businesses and residents shows moments before and immediately afterward, but the lack of video about the shooting itself has left many unanswered questions about the interaction between Guerrero and the agent, David Brouillette, who has told family members he was the shooter.
Thursday’s meeting included a small group of senators, Collins’ staff said, and was led by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul. The group also discussed the recent shooting by an ICE officer in Texas, where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed.
In both killings, ICE agents shot into cars that the men were driving.
Venturella confirmed to the senators that ICE policy now requires at least one officer to wear a body-worn camera when making vehicle stops and “when conducting enforcement interactions,” Collins said.
“I plan to meet with ICE leadership periodically to receive continued updates on their progress on this reform, better training, and more effective vetting of recruits,” Collins said.
A top Trump administration immigration enforcement official, Tom Homan, said on CNN this week that Brouillette “should not have cleared vetting” if the facts about his background that have come to light since the shooting are true.
Collins said the requirement for body cameras and two other safeguards she authored in the spring appropriations bill were critical to her support for the bill. It also included $2 million for deescalation training and $20 million for increased oversight of immigration detention facilities.
She also cited those provisions to explain why she voted to pass a June bill that funded ICE and Customs and Border Protection for three years. Protesters in Maine have heavily criticized her support of the June bill since the shooting in Biddeford. Republicans used a mechanism called reconciliation that allowed them to pass the funding without Democrats’ support.
The mechanism made it so Congress has less power than usual to direct how ICE and CBP can spend the money. Collins said it was necessary to keep funding the agencies, particularly given their work in combating cartels, human smuggling, child exploitation, forced labor and financial crimes, and illegal weapons and drugs that could come over the border.
Three days after the shooting in Biddeford, ICE told the Press Herald that cameras had been deployed to more than half the field offices with the remaining half to receive them in the next 60 days. The timeline Collins said she guaranteed on Thursday is ahead of that schedule by at least a couple of weeks. She said the cameras would start to deploy next week around the country.
ICE said the cameras are necessary given an increase in assaults on its officers.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Rachel Estabrook can be reached at restabrook@metln.org.