EXCLUSIVE — Senior House Democrats are pushing Immigration and Customs Enforcement for answers about millions of dollars in congressional funding wasted on thousands of vehicles that officers cannot use following a Washington Examiner investigation that exposed the expenditure.
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee sent acting ICE Director Todd Lyons a letter Wednesday asking the agency to provide contracts and correspondence related to the purchase of 2,500 flashy, logo-centric vehicles by Madison Sheahan, outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s former appointee within ICE. The letter was obtained first by the Washington Examiner.
“On March 8, 2026, the Washington Examiner reported that Madison Sheahan, ICE’s former Deputy Director handpicked by outgoing Secretary Noem, has saddled the agency with thousands of vehicles it cannot use,” the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), and Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), ranking member of Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability Subcommittee, wrote in the letter.
“Specifically, in the latter half of 2025, Ms. Sheahan directed the purchase of 2,500 vehicles wrapped in the agency’s logo, contrary to ICE’s policy not to drive identifiable vehicles in public,” the lawmakers wrote. “A stunning choice for an agency that claimed at the time that death threats against its officers were up 8,000 percent.”
Thompson and Thanedar wrote to ICE last September and asked for similar information about a contract the agency had given to Hendrick Motorsports LLC, a North Carolina dealership owned by a Republican donor. The Democrats on the committee have not received a response.
The Democrats gave ICE until March 25 to provide answers to the first letter, as well as copies of all vehicle-related contracts since January 2025; copies of any amendments to vehicle contracts; information on how newly purchased vehicles are being used; and all communications between current and former ICE officials, such as Sheahan, and anyone associated with Hendrick Motorsports LLC or any other vendor that was awarded a contract.
The saga is the latest controversial expenditure of taxpayer money within the Department of Homeland Security and speaks to the different ways political appointees at the department have tried to approach operations versus how career law enforcement officials have historically done so.
Over the past year, assaults against ICE personnel have risen 8,000%, according to the DHS, and federal police have opted to hide their faces and identities while working in public. They have frequently switched license plates on unmarked rental vehicles to avoid detection by activists, who track the license plate numbers of suspected ICE vehicles in massive crowdsourced databases.
NOEM’S DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ICE BOUGHT THOUSANDS OF VEHICLES THAT OFFICERS CAN’T USE
Despite the growing number of ways ICE employees have sought to protect their identities, ICE’s former deputy director, Madison Sheahan, placed a bulk order for vehicles clearly marked with ICE’s logo.
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, the Washington Examiner reported this week.
