The horrible killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the resulting national outrage have given congressional Democrats perhaps their best chance so far to rein in President Trump’s misuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies. But they are totally squandering this opportunity. They have coalesced around a lackluster list of reforms that fully addresses neither the current situation in Minneapolis nor the broader problem of Trump essentially creating a fascist national police force.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans are on the verge of a temporary agreement to provide funding for the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies to prevent a government shutdown. But Senate Democrats say they won’t agree to long-term funding for ICE and the broader DHS unless three core Democratic demands are met: a requirement that ICE agents wear body cameras and proper identification and not masks; a new code of conduct for how agents use force and independent investigations if they are accused of violating those rules; and the end of roving patrols by ICE officers and requirements that they have warrants and work with state and local police.

That’s not nearly enough.

Body cameras are just not useful. As we’ve seen across the country, as local police officers increasingly wear them, law enforcement agencies are able to put up all kinds of barriers to the release of the footage. It’s not an accident that the police violence Americans see often comes from videos taken by citizens. And there is no evidence that officers behave better because they fear abuse being caught on tape. After all, police killings of civilians are at almost the exact same level as they were in 2014, before the Black Lives Matter movement and the resulting widespread adoption of body cameras. ICE agents wearing body cameras isn’t necessarily bad. But it’s the kind of toothless reform that Republicans and the Trump administration should be offering to calm anger from Pretti’s killing, not one of the core........

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