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WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the days after two American citizens were shot and killed in Minneapolis earlier this year, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the department would "rapidly acquire and deploy" body cameras to its officers around the country.
Nearly half a year later, after another shooting death under disputed circumstances blamed on the department, the promise still hasn't been fully met -- prompting outrage from critics who say the cameras are a chance at accountability for officers enforcing President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers involved in the Houston shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man who lived in the U.S. for more than 35 years, were not wearing body cameras, Homeland Security has said.
No evidence has emerged to support DHS' version of events -- that an officer opened fire at Salgado Araujo after he rammed an ICE vehicle chasing his van. Witnesses deny those claims. Cameras could have helped shed light on what exactly took place.
The shooting has opened ICE up to fresh scrutiny over its tactics at a time when arrests have ticked up and as DHS is flush with billions of dollars from an infusion granted by Congress -- some of which was earmarked to outfit officers with body cameras.
"Even after we've given ICE specifically $20 million for body cameras and Kristi Noem promised in February of this year that she was going to purchase them and get them in the field, that here we were in Houston that the agents didn't have them," said Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Houston, during a news conference Friday.
Days after Alex Pretti was killed while protesting ICE activity in Minneapolis in January, Noem announced that every Homeland Security officer on the ground there would be issued body-worn cameras. Noem said it was the beginning of a nationwide effort to get them to every officer around the country as funding becomes available.
"We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country," Noem, who has since been replaced by Markwayne Mullin, said in a social media post.
Homeland Security said Thursday that body cameras have been deployed to more than half of ICE field offices around the country and that the remainder would get them in the next 60 days.
Garcia said she told the acting head of ICE, David Venturella, during a phone call that she was outraged over the lack of body-worn cameras. She said Venturella told her that less than a third of officers nationally have been issued body cameras. He promised her that all officers would get them by the end of July, she said.
"Trust me, I will hold him to it, and I will make sure that all my colleagues in Congress and the Democratic caucus hold him to it," she said.
Michelle Gross, president of the Minnesota-based advocacy group Communities United Against Police Brutality said ICE shouldn't conduct enforcement operations until all officers are equipped with body cameras.
"If they're going to be running around with guns and stopping people, you damn well better have some body cameras," she said. "This is an agency that's soaking up an incredible amount of tax dollars and we can't have any accountability?"
Homeland Security said at the time of the Pretti shooting that four of the Border Patrol agents were wearing cameras. Investigators from Customs and Border Protection were able to use video from those cameras as well as other sources to determine that more than one officer on the scene fired shots during the Pretti death.
The department has not said whether any of the ICE officers on the scene of the killing of 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good earlier in January were wearing the cameras.