The DEA Once Touted Body Cameras for Their “Enhanced Transparency.” Now the Agency Is Abandoning Them.
An internal email obtained by ProPublica said the agency made the change to be “consistent” with a Trump executive order. But at least two other federal law enforcement agencies are still requiring body cameras.
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The Drug Enforcement Administration has quietly ended its body camera program barely four years after it began, according to an internal email obtained by ProPublica.
On April 2, DEA headquarters emailed employees announcing that the program had been terminated effective the day before. The DEA has not publicly announced the policy change, but by early April, links to pages about body camera policies on the DEA’s website were broken.
The email said the agency made the change to be “consistent” with a Trump executive order rescinding the 2022 requirement that all federal law enforcement agents use body cameras.
But at least two other federal law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department — the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — are still requiring body cameras, according to their spokespeople. The FBI referred questions about its body camera policy to the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
Renee Nicole Good calmly said everything was “fine” and “I’m not mad at you” seconds before an on-duty Immigration Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot her in Minneapolis as she drove away, according to a cellphone video shared on Friday by Donald Trump’s White House.
Four top prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division resigned last night in protest. The chief, principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief all walked out after Harmeet Dhillon refused to investigate the ICE agent who killed Renee Good. This is the same unit that prosecuted the officers who murdered George Floyd and Tyre Nichols. For decades, this office has been America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill. Dhillon—who retweeted posts justifying Good’s killing before any investigation—has now made clear: there will be none. The FBI isn’t investigating Agent Jonathan Ross. They’re investigating Good—looking for ties to “activist groups.” The message to every federal agent is unmistakable: shoot first, the DOJ has your back. Minnesota prosecutors say they can’t file state charges without evidence the FBI is now hoarding. This isn’t a cover-up. It’s the end of civil rights enforcement.
Nev Shalev reports on Substack:
MASS RESIGNATIONS AT DOJ
Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned today over the Justice Department’s handling of the Renee Good shooting, bringing the total to ten after four Civil Rights Division prosecutors walked out yesterday. The biggest name is Joseph Thompson, the acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota and the prosecutor leading the sprawling fraud investigation Trump used to justify the Minneapolis crackdown. Thompson says the Justice Department demanded he open a criminal investigation into Becca Good, Renee’s widow, over her “activist ties” — and he refused. The DOJ also blocked cooperation with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and refused to investigate whether the shooting itself was lawful. “What these ten prosecutors are saying by leaving their jobs is the DOJ is no longer going to protect the American citizen against anything ICE does,” Zev explained. “ICE can do whatever they want, and the DOJ is not going to be there to defend Americans. The rule of law no longer applies.”
And he adds:
SOMALIA TPS TERMINATED
The Department of Homeland Security announced the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Somalia, ordering 2,471 Somali nationals to leave by March 17. The announcement came with a Truth Social post featuring Trump’s face and the quote “I am the captain now” — appropriating a line from a Somali pirate in Captain Phillips. This targets the same Minneapolis community where Renee Good was killed, where 4,000 ICE agents are now deployed, and where checkpoints have been established across the city. “This is either designed to punish Minneapolis for daring to confront Trump, or it’s ethnic cleansing,” Zev observed. “Maybe both.”
14th Jan 2026:
On the one-week anniversary of Renee Good’s death, Governor Walz addressed Minnesotans as thousands of federal agents remain in the state.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent thousands more agents to the Twin Cities for immigration enforcement and fraud investigations.
The governor alleged agents are going door-to-door to homes around the state and asking residents to point out where their non-white neighbors live.
“Just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans,” Walz said, adding that agents are “Kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.”
“It’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” he said.
Walz also addressed President Trump’s remarks on social media that “the day of retribution and reckoning is coming” for Minnesotans.
“That is a direct threat against the people of this state, who dared to vote against him three times, and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace,” Walz said.
Walz added that Trump wants chaos, confusion and violence on the streets of Minnesota, saying, “We cannot give him what he wants.”
The governor also reminded Minnesotans that it is their right to peacefully film ICE agents, encouraging residents to use their phones to film suspected federal law enforcement activity whenever safely able
Minneapolis — January 15, 2026 — A federal law-enforcement officer discharged his firearm Wednesday evening in north Minneapolis and struck a person who authorities were attempting to arrest. That much is confirmed by multiple local news outlets reporting directly from the scene.
Presently the only detailed account available is a lengthy statement issued by Department of Homeland Security. The statement is unusual in the amount of detail it offers, and in other ways as well. Here is the full DHS statement: Because the rather unusual “narrative control” DHS statement itself is now part of the story — not merely a source of isolated facts — we are reproducing it here in full so readers can see how the narrative is being defined before investigation. Following is the DHS statement:
At 6:50 PM CT, federal law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop in Minneapolis of an illegal alien from Venezuela who was released into the country by Joe Biden in 2022.
In an attempt to evade arrest, the subject fled the scene in his vehicle and crashed into a parked car. The subject then fled on foot.
The law enforcement officer caught up to the subject on foot and attempted to apprehend him when the subject began to resist and violently assault the officer. While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.
Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg.
All three subjects ran back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside.
The attacked officer and subject are both in the hospital. Both attackers are in custody.
This attack on another brave member of law enforcement took place while Minnesota’s top leaders, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, are actively encouraging an organized resistance to ICE and federal law enforcement officers.
Their hateful rhetoric and resistance against men and women who are simply trying to do their jobs must end. Federal law enforcement officers are facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest criminals and lawbreakers.
No Independent Information Available
At this point, no independent body-camera footage, local police report, or civilian eyewitness account has been publicly released that verifies the detailed account offered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Instead, the narrative circulating in most media reports draws almost entirely from the DHS statement issued shortly after the incident — a statement that goes far beyond what is independently established and aggressively frames what happened and why
And Terrence Goggin on Substack comments:
We are living through such an historic period of tumult and emerging warfare. It will have a name. “TRUMP’S WAR AGAINST THE STATES” is as good as any for that is what it has become. With that in mind, we should think about it in those historic terms.
It is a war; it has no precedent in American History, just as The Civil War had no precedent in American History. And we must look to heroes of our past who encountered similar difficulties. Abraham Lincoln quickly comes to mind. Speaking to Congress after a full year of war in December of 1862, with recruitment and financial difficulties abounding, he said:
“The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As out case is new, we must act and think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
It’s good advice. We better take it.
Map of Minneapolis:
22nd January, 2026
Court testimony shows that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent identified as the shooter in the murder of Renee Good, was a veteran deportation officer, firearms instructor, and Special Response Team member who led multi-agency federal teams. Ross testified in December that he had participated in hundreds of vehicle encounters and was trained in use of force tactics, contradicting claims that the shooting resulted from inexperience or split-second error.
Why It Matters: That the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good was a veteran firearms instructor and response team member undercuts the regime’s claim that the shooting was an unavoidable error. When a highly trained federal officer fires into a moving vehicle (three times) despite longstanding policing norms against it, it reveals an escalation in ICE’s policies.Source:WIRED
And
Trump moved to cut funding for ICE body cameras and reduced oversight
Administration opposed efforts last year to expand use of cameras by immigration agents and cut oversight staffing
Cameras worn by officers have long been central to police reform efforts for this reason. The Trump administration, however, moved last year to slow-walk a pilot program to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers body cameras, urging Congress in June to cut the funding by 75% and bucking a nationwide trend of cameras for law enforcement. Officials in 2025 also placed on paid leave nearly all staffers working for three internal watchdogs conducting oversight of immigration agencies, undermining their capacity to investigate abuses.
Darius Reeves, who was the director of ICE’s Baltimore field office until August, said a body-camera pilot program rollout had been slow in 2024 under the presidency of Joe Biden, a Democrat, and “died on the vine” under Trump, a Republican.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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