The Department of Homeland Security announced that federal immigration agents in Minneapolis will now wear body cameras, following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during an aggressive federal enforcement operation.
On its face, this sounds like progress. Body cameras are often proposed as a remedy because they promise visibility where trust has eroded.
But visibility was never the problem in Minneapolis.
We already have video—from multiple angles—of both killings. In Pretti’s case, footage shows him holding a phone, not a weapon, when agents fired repeatedly. State authorities have ruled his death a homicide. The government’s initial account did not match what the cameras showed.
That fact matters.
Body cameras record events. They do not correct false narratives after the fact. They do not restrain policy. And they do not alter incentives when power is insulated from consequence. Transparency without consequence is not accountability; it is documentation.
The deeper issue is structural—and deliberate. Federal agents are operating under a directive to arrest thousands of suspected undocumented immigrants each day, reinforced by political pressure, funding mechanisms, and legal doctrines that shield senior officials from accountability. When success is measured by volume and speed rather than restraint, aggression becomes predictable. In that environment, it is not an accident. It is a feature.
To speak of “reform” in this context is to misuse the word.
Cameras do not change orders. They do not slow raids. They do not create restraint where none is required. They merely preserve evidence—evidence that can be ignored, reframed, or explained away. The question is not whether footage exists, but what follows when it contradicts the official account.
What is most revealing is not that force was used, but that the administration attempted to tell the public it had not been used as we plainly saw it. That reflex—to deny what is visible rather than explain what occurred—is not incidental. When authority insists that what you witnessed did not happen, the issue is no longer policing. It is truth.
We have grown accustomed to language doing this work. Violence becomes “enforcement.” Warehouses become “facilities.” Immunity becomes “support.” Each phrase dulls responsibility and shifts attention away from human outcomes. This is not rhetorical sloppiness. It is how power prepares itself to avoid judgment.
Once that preparation is complete, practices that were once exceptional begin to feel ordinary. Federal enforcement tactics once confined to borders are now routine in American cities, not because they were openly debated and endorsed, but because they were normalized—through repetition, administrative language, and the quiet assumption that what is done efficiently need not be questioned closely.
In that context, body cameras offer reassurance without restraint. They should have existed years ago. But they do not answer the only question that matters: what happens after the footage is reviewed?
If nothing follows—no discipline, no prosecutions, no policy correction—then the cameras serve a single function: to create the appearance of restraint while force proceeds undisturbed.
Minneapolis has already given us evidence. What remains is a choice. We can treat these deaths as unfortunate anomalies, or we can acknowledge what they reveal about the direction of power. To see this clearly is not yet to know what to do, but it is to know that doing nothing is no longer neutral.
When truth is recorded but denied, the danger is no longer secrecy. It is permission. History shows how quickly such permission spreads—and how rarely it is revoked.