The rumor we reported on earlier appears to now be official: Immigration and Customs Enforcement has adopted the SIG P320C as their next service handgun. News of SIG’s win was confirmed by a post on pistol-forum.com containing a leaked screenshot of a new article on ICE’s internal website, with the headline ICE Picks a New Service Handgun.
The contract, probably worth well over ten million dollars, has its origins in a 2015 Request for Information (RFI) issued by the agency. Speculation surrounded the RFI that it was tailored specifically for SIG – although the specifications were not so unambiguous that some didn’t speculate S&W as the favorite! In this case, SIG was defending their previous contract: The P320 will be replacing the agency’s old P229 DAK handguns, also from SIG.
A contract like this one, which would normally be the biggest news of the year for a gun company, is overshadowed by SIG Sauer’s recent win of the massive US Army Modular Handgun System contract, worth an estimated $580 million dollars. However, the Immigration contract win is still very significant for SIG Sauer in another way, as two wins at major US government contracts in the span of a month is a huge boost to the brand’s reputation.