ICE Will Be Required to Wear Body Cameras in a Win for Transparency—But the Implementation Will Be Key
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a policy calling for ICE personnel to wear body cameras in most situations when carrying out enforcement duties. According to ICE Deputy Director Patrick J. Lechleitner, the move is designed to build public trust by enhancing “accountability, effectiveness, and transparency in [ICE’s] law enforcement tactics.” The program will build on learnings from a six-month congressionally mandated body camera pilot program that ICE ran in 2021 and 2022. But the data from that pilot has two critical gaps that must be addressed for the program to succeed.
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A new report released March 19 by the American Immigration Council and ABLE, an Ohio-based legal services organization, describes the widespread use of racial profiling by Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement when targeting Latinos in northern Ohio. Many of these detentions were initiated by local law enforcement and ended up in deportations.
Through 2,800+ pages of documents accessed via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, we found that Border Patrol and Ohio law enforcement primarily targeted darker-skinned Latinos over a six-year period in northern Ohio. In one sample, 69 percent of those arrested had no criminal history.
Read more: Ohio, We Have A Problem
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The past week saw frequent back-and-forth in the courts over Texas’s proposed SB4 law, which would allow local law enforcement to arrest and detain people suspected of entering the United States without authorization. The Supreme Court temporarily allowed the law to go into effect, but it was blocked hours later by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court will hear further argument on the constitutionality of the SB4 on April 3, 2024.
Read more: Texas SB4 Law Sets Damaging Precedent for Similar Bills that Endanger Immigrant Families
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