More than a dozen House Democrats have introduced legislation that would require all U.S. deportation officers to wear body cameras, which Democrats say would help protect the rights of illegal immigrants as they are deported.
The ICE Body Camera Act, from Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., would require all Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to wear body cameras soon after her bill becomes law.
“The bill would mandate that ICE develop procedures for training agents and deploying body cameras – including the storage of digital information obtained through the cameras – and would require ICE agents to start wearing body cameras within eighteen months,” she said on Facebook.
Clarke said she and other Democrats are worried that illegal immigrants might be abused as the Trump administration seeks to remove them.
“As Donald Trump has dramatically expanded the number of undocumented Americans who are a priority for deportation, many immigrants in Brooklyn and across the United States now fear a knock on the door in the middle of the night or checkpoints on their drive home from work,” she said in a statement.
“These immigrants as well as advocates are concerned about the possibility of abuse, particularly when individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have only severely limited access to attorneys and to the due process of law,” she said. “We need to establish procedures that protect their rights.”
She said police officers in the U.S. are increasingly wearing body cameras in order to ensure people’s rights are protected, and that “we should apply this same approach to immigration enforcement.”
While Democrats have said deportation raids have soared under President Trump, ICE itself said reports of ICE checkpoints and “roundups” of illegal immigrants are false.
