ICE Is 'Hiding' Millions Of Dollars In New Trucks And SUVs As Agents Refuse To Drive Them

Around 2,500 pickup trucks and SUVs emblazoned with the jingoistic Immigration and Customs Enforcement motto "Defend The Homeland" are sitting unused across the country right now in yet another scandal of waste and taxpayer abuse under the Trump administration. Recently departed ICE deputy director, 28-year-old Madison Sheahan, placed the order in late 2025, pushing millions of taxpayer dollars into depreciating assets that have largely gone unused, reports The Washington Examiner. Sources indicate the vehicles, which feature large the presidential seal and ICE branding, are impractical for the agency's primary stated purpose of arresting and detaining undocumented immigrants.

One source told Washington Examiner reporters that "ICE has never had marked vehicles." If your stated goal is to apprehend people who want to avoid law enforcement, it's probably counterproductive to show up in a six-thousand pound vehicle emblazoned with your law enforcement agency's name in two foot high gold lettering. ICE agents don't even want to show their faces, wearing masks for risk of being held accountable for their actions brutalizing and murdering Americans. It tracks that they also do not want to be seen getting in and out of ICE-branded trucks. 

"We don't want to use these, we can't," officers told the Examiner when the trucks started showing up. One California ICE office hasn't moved its delivery of branded trucks since they arrived late last year. "It's ridiculous because you don't want to advertise what you're doing," the Examiner's source said. "We're just hiding them in a parking garage somewhere because we don't want to drive them. Who wants to drive the marked vehicles?" 

DHS claims civilian attacks on ICE agents are up significantly since the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January. For obvious reasons, Americans are upset with ICE officers, and those officers want to be as invisible as possible right now. 

Noem and Sheahan, meanwhile, are seemingly more concerned with optics, power brandishing, and sliding millions of dollars to enrich Trump donors in some of the most blatant acts of cronyism in American history. According to further reporting from The Daily Beast, NASCAR team owner and General Motors dealership owner Rick Hendrick was awarded a lucrative no-bid contract to outfit 25 vehicles for ICE recruitment purposes at a rate of $90,000 each.

Noem was recently removed from her cabinet-level DHS duties and given a newly made-up job as Special envoy to the shield for the Americas. President Trump will likely replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, after she was grilled in congress for her track record of secretive spending, expensive no-bid contracts, and shadowy budgets. This includes a $70 million luxury Boeing 737, it's stated purpose? For Deportations. Sure, Jan. 

Sheahan, meanwhile, departed ICE in January to pursue elected office in Ohio's 9th district congressional representative. Prior to working under Noem at ICE, the 28-year old was Noem's political campaign director in South Dakota, ran the state's Republican Party, and spent one year as secretary of Wildlife and Fisheries in Louisiana. Which of these jobs qualified her to run a nine-billion dollar federal law enforcement agency with 20,000 officers remains unclear.  

DHS higher ups are currently scrambling to find a way for the vehicle delivery contracts to be rescinded, and paying further money to remove the agency branding in an effort to make them more discrete. For much of its short existence, ICE has operated largely without budgetary oversight, and despite these massive wasteful spends, that doesn't seem like it will be changing. House Judiciary Committee member, Representative Lucy McBath, proposed a budget amendment last year to allow congressional oversight of at least a portion of ICE spending. The amendment was voted down.