Kristi Noem's Parting Gift to DHS: Thousands of Trucks They Can't Use

[Nevilledog]

https://newrepublic.com/post/207536/kristi-noem-department-homeland-security-hiding-thousands-trucks

No paywall link
https://archive.li/axig8

The Department of Homeland Security is trying to hide hundreds of ICE-mobiles they can’t actually use to detain immigrants.

ICE’s former deputy director, Madison Sheahan, wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on 2,500 vehicles custom-wrapped to say “ICE” on the side, three sources told the Washington Examiner. The gaudy cars feature massive ICE logos, red stripes, and a golden decal of President Donald Trump’s name on the back window.

The vehicles first appeared in a DHS video intended to make ICE look cool. But a fleet of ostentatious cars are useless to Trump’s masked militia that typically disappears people using unmarked vehicles.
“It’s ridiculous because you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing,” one person told the Examiner. “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?”

A second personal familiar with the matter said the marked cars are being used for custodial pickups and transfers. That’s really all they’re good for.

It seems that the 28-year-old Kristi Noem handpicked to oversee ICE’s billion-dollar budget may have wasted millions of dollars. DHS spent $1.5 million on 25 new sports utility vehicles in November, and later paid between an additional $174,000 and $230,000 to get them delivered. Sheahan went so far as to request an upgrade for most of the agency’s fleet from unmarked cars to the flashy new ones.

Perhaps she had imagined that ICE would act as a kind of police, and not the president’s untrained extrajudicial paramilitary.

*snip*