How much money has ICE given Federal Premium Ammunition?
Executive summary
Reporting shows multiple contracts between ICE (a component of DHS) and Federal Premium Ammunition, including a clearly reported $75 million multi‑year award for .223 Rem. duty rounds and several other awards for different calibers and quantities; however, publicly available stories and contract notices do not provide a single, authoritative total value that ICE has paid Federal Premium across all contracts, and some accounts bundle DHS components or list quantities without dollar amounts [1] [2] [3].
1. What the public reporting documents: a $75 million .223 award and other wins
Multiple trade outlets and government‑contract summaries report that Federal Premium received a five‑year agreement providing up to $75 million in .223 Rem. duty ammunition for DHS law‑enforcement components that includes ICE among recipients, with delivery beginning in 2019 [1] [2]. Those same and related press pieces describe other Federal Premium awards to DHS components (including ICE use cases) such as .40 S&W HST duty loads and tactical buckshot, indicating a pattern of repeated contract wins across calibers and years [4] [5] [6].
2. Quantities reported versus dollar values reported
Some coverage emphasizes unit ceilings rather than firm dollar totals: an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) notice cited a maximum supply of up to 28 million .223 Rem. cartridges over five years, but that report noted the contract’s monetary value “was not immediately available” [3]. Separate articles report very large ceilings for other calibers—up to 180 million rounds of .40‑caliber HST under a DHS multi‑agency contract—and a buckshot contract providing up to 2,227,500 12‑gauge shells—figures described as quantities rather than a clean ICE‑to‑Federal Premium dollar transfer total [4] [6] [7].
3. Aggregation pitfalls and agency bundling
Many cited articles describe “DHS” or “multi‑agency” contracts that serve multiple DHS components (ICE, CBP, Coast Guard, etc.), meaning published dollar figures do not always reflect ICE‑only expenditures; for example, the $75 million .223 contract was framed as a multi‑agency MAC that supplies DHS law‑enforcement components [1]. Industry press pieces and defense‑contract summaries sometimes aggregate DHS and DoD wins together—one headline noted Federal Premium was awarded $116 million in DHS/DoD contracts—so summing those numbers risks double‑counting or attributing DoD buys to ICE unless one consults the underlying contract actions [2].
4. Oversight notes, discrepancies, and limits of reporting
Oversight materials and contract databases show that ICE procurement of small arms and ammunition involves strategic sourcing and shared purchasing mechanisms, and past GAO inquiries have flagged discrepancies in ICE firearm and ammo purchase data—meaning public summaries can be incomplete or inconsistent [8] [2]. Several trade stories explicitly say contract monetary terms or per‑round pricing are “not immediately available,” and many sources are industry press releases or niche shooting‑sports outlets that quote company statements without linking to the federal award modification or USASpending entry that would definitively show obligated dollars to ICE alone [3] [9].
5. Bottom line: what can confidently be said
Based on the available reporting, ICE (as part of DHS procurements) has awarded or been a recipient under contracts to Federal Premium that include a reported $75 million multi‑year agreement for .223 Rem. duty ammunition and other sizable awards and quantity ceilings (including up to 28 million .223 rounds, up to 180 million .40‑caliber rounds in a related DHS contract, and a 2,227,500‑round buckshot ceiling), but the public reporting does not provide a single, verified cumulative dollar sum explicitly labeled “total ICE payments to Federal Premium” across all contracts and years [1] [3] [4] [6] [2]. To produce a precise total would require querying the underlying federal award records (contract numbers and obligation entries) in USASpending or DHS procurement systems to separate ICE‑only obligations from multi‑agency or DoD amounts—records that are not fully reproduced in the provided sources [3] [2] [8].