A Berkshire County company that produces armored vehicles has become the top recipient of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement dollars in Massachusetts over the first months of the second Trump administration. A new report by independent journalist Bill Shein of Reason Gone Mad explores how Pittsfield-based Lenco Industries and its flagship product the BearCat has emerged as one of the most visible elements of the ICE arsenal. The company’s economic success raises complicated questions for Massachusetts lawmakers, many of whom have harshly condemned ICE and Trump’s immigration agenda. As Shein tells WAMC, most elected officials in the commonwealth aren’t willing to talk about the tension between commerce and compassion when it comes to Lenco and their contracts with ICE.
SHEIN: Lenco is a long-standing company in Berkshire County, but it’s been here about, more than 40 years. And they started out making armored cars for banks back in the 80s, and by the mid to late 90s, had evolved into armored tactical vehicles for law enforcement, which they say they've sold 7,000 of them in all 50 states and in 40 countries. So, very central to the debate over the last couple of decades about the militarization of law enforcement and whether or not local police forces should have this kind of equipment. It's a characterization that they reject- They think it's important for officer safety and the current threat environment to have tools like this, along with other things. They've been growing very rapidly. They have about 150 employees now, they have a sizable federal business. Since 2017, they've done about $140 million in business with the federal government. Some of that has been with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other parts of [the Department of Homeland Security], which is the part of the story that I started looking into a couple of months ago.
WAMC: And as you've reported, Lenco is now the highest recipient of ICE spending in Massachusetts, more than any other company during the second Trump administration.
Yeah. So, what I looked at was, what I was interested in, since the second Trump administration began a little over a year ago, so, they are the top recipient of new contracting with ICE since January 20, 2025, so about $5.2 million in new contracts. They have had business with ICE going back to 2017, about $16 million as part of that larger federal business that they have. And what's interesting about and where it intersects with some interesting questions about economic development and jobs, is that ICE came to them in September with an order for an $8 million order that, ultimately, they couldn't fulfill because of their production capacity. And so, ICE went to another company for vehicles and then returned to Lenco a couple of months later, placed nearly $5 million order for these vehicles. And it's interesting on that economic development question, because Lenco has received about $350,000 in state grants over the last year to help them increase capacity and upgrade their manufacturing to meet customer demand.
Another important part of the story is about how ICE is actually using these Lenco products, and your story addresses that a little bit. Can you explain to our listeners, these products built in Berkshire County used in this broader national stage, how are they actually being utilized by ICE?
So, they're very high profile. They've used the vehicles in responses to protests in Chicago. They’ve certainly use them on some immigration raids, but they become prominent in their social media posts that they've used for a variety of things, to show their increasingly militarized esthetic of immigration enforcement. They've also used them in recruiting videos, these very highly produced videos that show immigration agents in tactical gear on immigration raids and then in other capacities. But they've really prominently featured the vehicle itself to make a point. Some of the folks I interviewed in the story talked about that, and so that's one of the reasons why they become pretty high profile, not just necessarily because of their utility as an armored vehicle, but in what it looks like when they make a video with it.
So, in a way, the Lenco BearCat is, in a way, the face of ICE in some ways on this national stage?
In some ways, yeah, and certainly when they want to project a certain image of what they're doing, and one of the people I interviewed talked about, as an intimidation factor, particularly in response to protests, to show the kind of response that people would get if they were protesting.
Now, as your story probes, this raises a lot of interesting questions for Democratic lawmakers in Massachusetts, who, from Governor Maura Healey to state reps on the local level here in the Berkshires, have spoken out very stridently against ICE in pretty unsparing terms. So, your story explores that tension between a lucrative economic source of income like Lenco, and these broader concerns with the second Trump administration and ICE in general. Tell us about what you found when you asked questions of those lawmakers.
Sure, and that's really interesting part of the story. It became a story for me last May when there was an immigration raid in Great Barrington that that used a Lenco BearCat to bring heavily armed immigration agents to town, and there was a strong response in the community, the same way there was last March in a story that you covered where there were raids up here that arrested, I think, more than dozen folks, and there was a strong response from elected officials. So, Representative Leigh Davis in Great Barrington had concerns about the escalation in ICE tactics, and Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier, who represents Pittsfield, spoke pretty starkly about what she was seeing and compared ICE tactics to things that she compared to the Holocaust. So, a very strong response. Governor Healey just last month had sent a letter to some of the companies that provide deportation flights for ICE out of an Air Force base in Massachusetts just outside of Boston, in a very sharply worded letter said, stop providing equipment and services to ICE, they're anti-American, they are violating due process rights, they're cruel. So, in my reporting, I wanted to get a sense from elected officials, this intersection of local jobs and companies that are doing business with ICE and how that aligns with their feelings about the immigration enforcement campaign that's going on. There was largely very little response. Governor Healey did not respond to questions about whether that same standard that she had asked these companies to apply should also apply to companies in Massachusetts. Representative Davis didn't respond. Neither US Senator [Elizabeth] Warren or Senator [Ed] Markey, both who have spoken out very sharply about ICE, no response. Mayor Peter Marchetti here in in Pittsfield, he declined a bunch of interview requests and issued a statement saying that he's not going to comment on any companies or contracts that they may or may not have. Senator Paul Mark from Western Mass, he did say that he felt, if the company and the community has some concerns about this, that he felt the company should consider suspending sales to ICE, and while he didn't go so far as to say they shouldn't receive state grants, he did say that that he would be more likely to advocate on their behalf for future grants if they were to suspend sales to ICE. Also, Congressman Richard Neal, no response. Some other economic development agencies that have provided grants, no response. And so, a lot of open questions about how to how to align concerns about immigration enforcement with companies in Massachusetts providing equipment and services to DHS and its components.
Now, as far as Lenco themselves, did they get back to you? Did they offer any comment on these observations?
They didn't. I sent them a lot of questions and asked for an interview, and no response.
From your perspective, where does the conversation go from here? Again, we've seen a lot of outpouring of condemnation of ICE, we have a company that essentially is profiting significantly off of its relationship with ICE, lawmakers seemingly unwilling to confront that disparity- Where does the conversation go from here?
It's an open question. I think there have been activists around the country who have started to look at this, and you've seen some things bubbling up online databases of companies that do business with ICE from the same procurement data that I that I looked at. I don't know what's going to happen here. I think it remains to be seen. Some elected officials- I know Representative Farley-Bouvier said she's looking at this, and she wasn't prepared to make a statement or take a position quite yet, but she said it is something that she thinks needs to be talked about, and we'll see if how that plays out, and if activists also use this as a leverage point in their in their campaigns against immigration enforcement the way it's being done right now.
Independent journalist Bill Shein. Bill, thank you so much.
Thanks, Josh. Great to see you.
