Associate professor discusses body cameras and ICE
Mount Holyoke Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy David Hernández spoke to the media about body cameras and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
On July 13, 2026, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national, was shot and killed by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Biddeford, Maine. The officers were not wearing body cameras. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) blamed the lack of body cameras on government shutdowns.
David Hernández, associate professor of Latina/o Studies and Critical Race and Political Economy at Mount Holyoke College, spoke to USA Today and the Bangor Daily News about the lack of body cameras.
He disputed the DHS claim that government shutdowns were to blame for the absence of body cameras. “That’s a total lie because they were the agency that kept functioning during the shutdown,” Hernández said to USA Today. He also noted that Congress allocated $75 billion to ICE before the shutdown. “It’s to protect themselves from the reckless and disproportionate violence that they use on migrants. They do not have the capacity to apprehend someone without violence.”
Masking and ICE agents’ aggressive tactics create the conditions for the kind of violence seen in Biddeford, he said to the Bangor Daily News. Hernández suggested that legislation is one of the few tools Congress has to force change, but he doubts the administration would act without public pressure. “They count on people’s short memories,” he said.