WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has come out in favor of at least one immigration reform that Democrats are demanding — starting in one of the most turbulent cities where the Trump administration has been engaging in enforcement.
Noem posted Monday on X that after speaking with border czar Tom Homan, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, “every officer in the field in Minneapolis” will now be wearing body cameras.
“As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country,” the DHS chief added.
Universal body cameras are just one of many proposals congressional Democrats are hoping to tuck into a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security this month — following the fatal shootings of two anti-ICE agitators in Minneapolis by federal agents.
President Trump struck a deal last week with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to pass a stopgap funding bill for the embattled department.
That will give negotiators more time to hash out a host of Democratic proposals to ban ICE agents from wearing masks, force them to identify themselves and require them to secure judicial warrants for removals.
Some hardline Republicans had also signaled opposition to the larger government funding package passed by the Senate if it doesn’t include a bill forcing people registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship.
On Monday, Trump appeared to endorse Noem’s move to deploy the body cameras.
“I leave it to her,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “They generally tend to be good for law enforcement because people can’t lie about what’s happening.”
“So it’s, generally speaking, I think 80% good for law enforcement. But if she wants to do that, I’m okay with it,” Trump added.
Mark Krikorian, who serves as executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post that Democrats’ demand for warrants to be signed by federal judges would hamstring deportations.
“It’s intended to be a way of preventing immigration enforcement — that’s the goal of this judicial warrant nonsense,” Kirkorian said.
“The big issue isn’t really masking,” he added. “I think that has to be a decision that depends on circumstances.”
The House will be voting on the stopgap funding measure this week, while the Democratic reforms to DHS are being deliberated by members from both parties.
Anti-ICE activists have taken to the streets of Minneapolis in protest of removal operations that have included at times the wrongful detentions of US citizens and the execution of warrants that led to arrests inside homes.
Lyons recently broadened agents’ ability to round up illegal aliens through the use of administrative warrants, according to a memo reported by The New York Times, an authority that has already been used to make some home arrests.
A rep for the Migration Policy Institute, which has advocated in the past for Democratic policy proposals related to immigration, said that until recently judicial warrants were viewed as necessary for home arrests.
“It is only with the May 2025 memo that ICE asserted that it has the right to enter homes with administrative warrants — an issue presently facing legal challenge, including on grounds it violates the Fourth Amendment,” the rep said.
DHS agents shot and killed two demonstrators last month — Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 — as they were impeding enforcement.
Good accelerated her car in the direction of an agent before he pulled the trigger. Pretti was armed with a loaded handgun and got into a struggle with agents before two began opening fire.
Both shootings are now under federal investigation and served as a rallying point for congressional Democrats opposed to Trump’s immigration agenda.
Schumer took a victory lap on Friday after the Senate passed a bill that had stripped immigration enforcement funding from a larger package of appropriations “so we can overhaul DHS to rein in ICE and end the violence.”
The Democratic proposals for a revised DHS funding bill also include demands to “end roving patrols” and establish a universal code of conduct for all federal law enforcement officers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Sunday that Trump and Republicans are already on board with some of those reforms.
“For example, we want body cameras on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“In fact, in the bill that the Democrats are currently rejecting, we put $20 million in that legislation to allow for that,” he added.
But it’s the judicial warrant requirement that has spooked border hawks like Krikorian.
“If Congress were to change the law, every federal district judge would be awakened in the middle of the night every single day with perfectly legitimate requests for dozens of judicial warrants for illegal aliens,” he explained.
“The demand for a judicial warrant for arresting any illegal immigrant is specifically intended to prevent the deportation of any illegal alien,” he stressed.
While in some cases going maskless would not put agents in danger, Krikorian also noted that networks of ICE opponents have been threatening families once they’ve identified an officer.
The CIS executive director indicated that opposition to warrants for home searches, masks and body cameras may not be “a hill worth dying on” for Republicans.
