Pittsfield armored vehicle company is largest ICE contract in Mass.

Local News

Lenco has scored $5.2 million in contracts since last year, and its BearCat’s “militarized aesthetic” has been a visual centerpiece of some ICE operations.

Federal law enforcement agents ride a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle through demonstrators during a protest outside an immigrant processing and detention center in October. Scott Olson/Getty Images

A Western Massachusetts armored vehicle company, which earned two state grants to increase production, boasts the state’s largest contract with ICE to outfit federal immigration agents with militarized vehicles, federal records show.

Through DHS, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has entered into contracts worth $5.2 million in the past year with Pittsfield-based Lenco Industries, known for its tactical BearCat vehicle.

But, even while Governor Maura Healey calls on other out-of-state companies to end business with ICE, the armored vehicle company’s new ICE contracts have escaped widespread scrutiny.

The contracts — including a $411,000 contract for a BearCat armored tactical vehicle for an ICE special response team in Kansas City — were first reported earlier this month by Reason Gone Mad, independent journalist Bill Shein’s project covering the region.

“ICE and its components have used Bearcats in very high profile situations for what have become social media videos, recruiting videos to present a particular — as one of the people I interviewed in the story said — a ‘militarized aesthetic’ to immigration enforcement,” Shein told Boston.com.

In May, ICE agents appeared to pull up in a BearCat to arrest a man living above a downtown Great Barrington business, Shein reported. BearCats have also appeared behind Homeland Security Kristi Noem in videos posted to social media by DHS.

Lenny Light, the executive vice president of Lenco, said in an email that, while the vehicle is noticeable during ICE activity, “we haven’t seen the BearCat as a visually central part of ICE operations.”

While most of Lenco’s contracts with the federal government predating Trump’s second term are for the Department of Defense or the State Department, Massachusetts is not unfamiliar with the BearCat.

At least nine BearCats stalked the streets of Watertown during the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2013, prompting the Cambridge police to receive a Lenco BearCat through a DHS grant after the bombing.

Nineteen other companies in Massachusetts also signed new spending contracts with ICE in the last year, including Plymouth-based B12 Technologies’s $4.5 million contract for “iris biometric recognition technology for offender recognition and access to a biometric information system to allow ICE agents to quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations,” a federal database said. BI2 Technologies did not respond to a request for comment.

Lenco earns state grants in past two years to ramp up production

DHS initially sought Lenco for a $8.2 million contract, but the company was unable to keep up, Shein reported. Lenco currently has a nearly $4.8 million contract to produce BearCats for ICE, which is set to end in May.

In the past two years, the armored vehicle company has applied for state grants to increase and modernize production. Lenco won $200,000 from the Healey administration in 2024, before Trump’s immigration crackdown, and $145,600 during the Trump administration to add more jobs.

When asked about Lenco at an unrelated event in Pittsfield, Governor Maura Healey said she’d “like to know more information about this particular company.”

“I don’t want state resources to support ICE,” Healey said. “I certainly would encourage any company to refrain from doing business in any way with ICE right now, who’s acting in ways that are illegal, unlawful, and unconstitutional.”

In January, Healey demanded out-of-state private airlines to not contract with ICE, but has not voiced similar sentiments about local companies, Shein said.

“It’s at that intersection of economic development and jobs and the countervailing forces of disapproval how that equipment is being used,” Shein said. “There’s been as I reported, not a lot of discussion about it.”

Lenco turned away $10 million from ICE, Light said, as the company builds for fire departments, EMS and emergency management agencies, the U.S. military and “NATO allies.”

“Lenco is busy and expanding, but not because of ICE,” Light said. “With all of the large defense manufacturers in the state, I think this speaks to how little ICE is actually spending in (Massachusetts).”

Molly Farrar is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on education, politics, crime, and more.

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