WASHINGTON — The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined during a U.S. House hearing Tuesday to apologize to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the victims of fatal shootings by immigration officers in Minneapolis last month.

Top Trump administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, had said both Minneapolis residents engaged in “domestic terrorism.” Good was a poet and mother of three and Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse. 

ICE acting Director Todd Lyons demurred when asked by California Democrat Eric Swalwell if he would apologize for that characterization. 

“I’m not going to speak to any ongoing investigation,” Lyons said.

Lawmakers on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee grilled Lyons, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow during Tuesday’s hearing, following the fatal shootings of Good on Jan. 7 and Pretti on Jan. 24. The deportation campaign in Minneapolis began more than two months ago.

Following the shootings, Democrats have pushed for policy changes to the appropriations bill that funds the agency for fiscal year 2026, scrambling a bipartisan agreement on the measure. 

If lawmakers don’t reach a deal by Friday, funding for much of DHS will run out. Funding for immigration enforcement will remain due to provisions in Republicans’ tax cuts and spending law last year.

Scott called the thousands of protestors and legal observers in Minnesota “paid agitators.” There is no evidence of that. 

Noem, who Democrats are pushing to impeach, was not at the hearing. 

The chair of the committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, acknowledged that the country was at an “inflection point” and called the deaths of Good and Pretti “unacceptable and preventable.”

But he otherwise largely defended federal immigration officials and the Trump administration’s enforcement tactics. 

The top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the Trump administration was weaponizing DHS against Americans. 

Body cameras, masks and roving patrols

Democrats questioned Scott and Lyons on a handful of policy proposals that Democrats are pushing for in the DHS appropriations bill.

The Democrats’ proposals include mandating body cameras for immigration agents and requiring those officers to identify themselves and not wear masks.

Thompson asked Lyons how many body cameras ICE officers have. Noem earlier this month announced DHS would be sending body cameras to all ICE officers across the country. 

Lyons said about 3,000 ICE officers currently have body cameras with another 6,000 cameras on the way.

Scott said that about 10,000 Border Patrol agents have body cameras out of 20,000 agents. 

Democratic Rep. Tim Kennedy of New York asked Lyons if he would commit to instructing ICE agents to stop wearing face coverings and masks in enforcement actions. 

“No,” Lyons said. 

Kennedy then asked Lyons if he believed Noem should resign, given the deadly shootings of Good and Pretti. 

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Lyons said. 

GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, a former chair of the committee who is retiring next year, said some of the roving patrols should be kept at the southern border, rather than in residential areas. 

“I’ve called for de-escalation after the two deaths, the two shootings that took place,” McCaul said. “I believe that these roving patrols should be done at the border rather than in the major cities of the United States.”

Democrats are also calling for an end to those roving patrols in enforcement in the interior of the U.S.  

McCaul added that federal immigration agents “are not trained to effectuate crowd control.”

“They are trained to move in surgically, go in and remove these dangerous, violent criminals from the United States of America,” he said.

Judgment day, Klan invoked 

The hearing had a few heated exchanges between Democrats and the administration officials.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, who is facing federal charges after a clash with immigration officers at a detention facility in Newark where she tried to conduct an unannounced oversight visit, asked Lyons if he considered himself a religious person. 

Lyons said he did and McIver asked him how he thought “judgment day would work for you with so much blood on your hands.”

“I’m not going to entertain the question,” Lyons said.

She asked Lyons if he thought he was “going to hell.”

Garbarino quickly shut down her line of questioning. 

Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois criticized the officials before her, and called for ICE to be abolished.

“I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol,” she said. “Those activities were criminal and so are yours.”

A demonstrator waves a red cloth as hundreds gather after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good through her car window Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026 near Portland Avenue South and East 34th Street in Minneapolis. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

WASHINGTON — The top two Democrats in Congress on Wednesday outlined their proposal for restrictions on immigration enforcement, including body cameras and a ban on masks, though they had no details to share about when actual negotiations would begin.

Lawmakers from both political parties have less than two weeks to find a solution before the stopgap law funding the Department of Homeland Security expires Feb. 13, which could force all of its components, including the Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency, into a shutdown. However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement still has access to $75 billion in funding included in the massive tax cuts and spending package signed into law last year.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said the offer that he and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were sending to Republicans was the result of “a very productive discussion.”

“Dramatic changes are necessary at the Department of Homeland Security with respect to its enforcement activities so that ICE and other agencies are conducting themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country, not in so many instances in a rogue or lawless manner,” Jeffries said. 

Democrats will insist that federal immigration agents: 

• Wear body cameras
• Only wear masks to conceal their identities in “extraordinary and unusual circumstances”
• Do not undertake roving patrols
• Do not detain people in certain locations, like houses of worship, schools, or polling places
• Do not engage in racial profiling
• Do not detain or deport American citizens 

Jeffries said that judicial, as opposed to administrative, warrants should be required “before everyday Americans are ripped out of their homes or snatched out of cars violently.

“The Fourth Amendment is not an inconvenience, it’s a requirement embedded in our Constitution that everyone should follow.”

That amendment states the government shall not violate the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and that warrants can only be issued with probable cause.  

Administrative warrants are not signed by a judge, but approved by ICE officers themselves. Under U.S. immigration law, ICE also has some authority to conduct warrantless arrests if an immigration officer comes across a person suspected to be in the country unlawfully and believes that person will escape before a warrant can be obtained. 

Accountability measures

Democrats will also press Republicans to agree to what Schumer described as “real accountability.”

“There’s got to be outside, independent oversight by state and local governments, by individuals,” Schumer said. “And there’s got to be a right to sue, there’s got to be a right to go to court and stop this.” 

Schumer criticized Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for saying that immigration agents should be able to wear masks, referring to them as “secret police” who need “to be identified more than any other group.”

“I would bet when Speaker Johnson goes down to Louisiana, the sheriffs and the police deputies are well identified, as they are in almost every city,” he said. 

When pressed about Johnson saying Republicans wouldn’t agree to require judicial warrants, Jeffries said the speaker had “articulated unreasonable positions.”

“He’s actually supporting the notion that masked and lawless ICE agents should be deployed in communities throughout America,” Jeffries said. “Mike Johnson called the Fourth Amendment an inconvenience. It’s not an inconvenience. It’s part of the fabric and DNA of our country, just like the First Amendment, yes even the Second Amendment, the 10th Amendment, the Fourth Amendment.

“We’re standing up for all of these constitutional privileges that have been part of who we are since the very beginning.” 

Negotiation timeline

Schumer said during the press conference that Democrats from the House and Senate were prepared to begin negotiations with Republicans, but would insist on changes “to rein in ICE in very serious ways.”

“If they’re not serious and they don’t put in real reform, they shouldn’t expect our votes, plain and simple,” he said.

Schumer appeared somewhat skeptical that Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, whom Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put forward as their top negotiator, was truly empowered to cut a deal on behalf of every GOP senator. 

Britt, chairwoman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, told reporters Wednesday that she expects lawmakers will need to approve another stopgap spending bill for the department, signaling she doesn’t expect a deal within the next two weeks. 

“We need a little more time, so hopefully (Democrats) see the good effort that we’ve made … and we’ll have another CR,” she said, referring to the technical name for a short-term funding bill, a continuing resolution. 

Britt did not say how long that temporary funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security would last.

Any spending bill, whether short or long, will need Democratic support to move through procedural votes in the Senate. 

Congress has approved 11 of the 12 annual funding bills, so DHS would be the only part of the federal government to shut down if lawmakers cannot approve its full-year bill or another stopgap measure before its funding expires.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at a roundtable discussion with local ranchers and employees from U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Jan. 7, 2026 in Brownsville, Texas. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday that body cameras would be given to federal immigration agents across the country, starting in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by agents in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide,” she wrote on social media. “We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country.”

Noem did not specifically say agents would be required to wear the cameras.

President Donald Trump said he was supportive of the move, according to White House pool reports.

“It wasn’t my decision,” he said. “I leave it to her. It tends to be good for law enforcement, because people can’t lie about what happened.”

The announcement comes amid a partial government shutdown by congressional Democrats who are pushing to change immigration enforcement operations across the country. One of those proposed policy changes is a requirement for federal immigration officers to wear body cameras. 

Democrats have also called for Noem to resign or be impeached after a second Minneapolis resident was shot and killed on Jan. 24 by federal immigration agents, 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti. On Jan. 7, Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, was killed by federal immigration agent Jonathan Ross. 

Even without approved funding in the Homeland Security appropriations bill, the agency still has roughly $175 billion in funding for immigration enforcement from the massive tax cuts and spending package passed last year. 

In the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill for Homeland Security, $20 million was set aside for body cameras for immigration agents. That measure would be the subject of two weeks of negotiations under the spending package under consideration in the House.