Kristi Noem’s Deputy ‘Wasted’ Millions on Vehicles with ICE Logo That Agents Refuse to Use: Report

Photo via @DHSgov on X.

The former deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent millions of taxpayer dollars acquiring new vehicles emblazoned with the ICE logo that agents refuse to use, according to a report by the Washington Examiner.

President Donald Trump announced last week that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was “moving” to a new position and he was nominating Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to take her place. Noem was ousted after growing backlash to the administration’s immigration crackdown sparked nationwide protests and multiple court challenges, especially after two fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Prior to exiting her position, Noem was subjected to a bipartisan evisceration in Senate and House Committee hearings, as members from both sides of the aisle lambasted her over the Good and Pretti shootings, ICE’s enforcement tactics, her alleged relationship with top adviser Corey Lewandowski, delays in disbursing FEMA aid to hurricane-ravaged areas of North Carolina, accusations about conflicts of interests for lucrative contracts her agency gave to McLaughlin’s husband and other allies, and even the admission from her memoir about shooting her dog, Cricket.

Madison Sheahan, a 29-year-old who was Noem’s political director when she was governor of South Dakota and then the executive director for the South Dakota Republican Party, was hired by Noem as ICE’s deputy director in March 2025. She resigned in January to announce she was running for a congressional seat in her home state of Ohio.

According to the report by the Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli, three sources described millions of taxpayer dollars being “wasted” on acquiring “thousands” of vehicles for ICE that are viewed by the agents as unusable.

“ICE has never had marked vehicles,” said one source familiar with the purchases. “In talking to people, they’re like, ‘We don’t want to use these, we can’t.’”

“ICE’s top brass are quietly searching for a way to amend the remainder of a massive order of pick-up trucks and SUVs that were ordered last year and slated to be wrapped with the agency’s name, logo, and motto, as well as storing away many vehicles that have been delivered to ICE facilities across the country,” wrote Giaritelli.

ICE’s operations have been heavily covered by media outlets across the country, specifically their use of face masks, plainclothes, and vehicles that are unmarked or have switched license plates to conceal the identities of their agents. Critics have called such tactics detrimental to transparency and accountability while the Trump administration has defended them as necessary to protect agents from reprisals.

Despite ICE’s efforts to conceal their agents and operations, Sheahan still “placed a bulk order for vehicles clearly marked with ICE’s logo,” wrote Giaritelli, and “now, ICE is trying to figure out how to fix her mistake” because it has been long-standing “protocol” to not drive identifiable vehicles for the vast majority of their activities.

“If leadership would have been consulted — leadership being the executive assistant directors, do you need marked vehicles, the people that have done this job would have said, ‘We don’t need marked vehicles, because you’re not going to use them,’” a source said.

Instead, wrote Giaritelli, Sheahan spent the last half of 2025 “upgrad[ing] much of the workforce’s fleet from unmarked cars to marked ones, purchasing a couple of thousand vehicles.”

The Examiner’s sources said that Noem and Lewandowski “supported Sheahan’s plan,” as it fit well with their “flashy campaign to intimidate illegal immigrants in the United States into self-deporting.”

Last August, DHS bragged about the new vehicles in social media posts made as part of the agency’s ICE recruitment efforts.

ICE has been on a hiring spree during Trump’s second term and “absolutely” needed to purchase more vehicles, a source told the Examiner, but ones with the ICE logo “cannot be used to go into communities and search for specific illegal immigrants that officers are searching for because they tip off anyone in eyesight that ICE is out.”

“It’s ridiculous because you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing,” the first 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?”

According to the source, the logo-wrapped vehicles are being stored idle at ICE facilities all over the country, unused except for  “custodial pick-ups, or when ICE asks a local jail or state prison to turn over someone in custody, and the jail agrees to do so,” wrote Giaritelli, and “cannot be used in general enforcement.”

ICE is currently working to amend the order specifications for any remaining vehicles still undelivered to make sure they don’t have any logo.

Giaritelli noted that the exact amount spent on these unusable ICE logo vehicles was unknown, as the agency had ordered a total of 2,500 new vehicles and the language that authorized the purchase in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was “kept vague,” but she was able to calculate that “25 trucks and SUVs wrapped in the new logo” that were ordered last summer “cost $2.4 million.”

This was a “massive expenditure” and “wasted,” wrote Giaritelli.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!