I have a feeling a few people have thought of this but I just wanted to post it to get other people’s opinions.

EDIT: The information has been found! Thanks guys. For anyone looking for this info too, see the below:

The former U.S. Customs Service, which was part of the U.S. Treasury, seems to have originally acquired these AUGs.

In March 2003, the Customs Service was moved under the brand new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it was combined with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and reorganized into two organizations under DHS: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CPB, which includes the Border Patrol).

With that out of the way, here are some links with proof:

2010 - CBP usage, Page 71: https://info.publicintelligence.net/CBP-ForcePolicyHandbook.pdf#page11

2004 ICE usage, Page 40 https://govtribe.com/file/government-file/attachment-16-interim-ice-firearms-policy-dot-pdf

1993 - US Customs Service usage, Page 87: https://books.google.com/books/about/Inability_of_the_U_S_Customs_Service_to.html?id=LLa_rBvX-9EC

And finally, this one’s pretty damn fun: 1988 - U.S. Comptroller decision letter, dismissing Colt’s protest that the specifications of a 1987 RFP (No. CS-87- 090) for the acquisition of a new rifle by the U.S. Customs Service was literally just describing a Steyr AUG (and it totally was haha): https://www.gao.gov/assets/490/486673.pdf

Gun South, Inc. (GSI) appears to be the company that was awarded the 1987 U.S. Customs Service contract to import the Steyr AUG!

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UPDATE: MORE COOL HISTORY

This is both an interesting story and another explanation of how a bunch of AUG’s made their way into various smaller U.S. law enforcement and military agencies. I found a pair of court cases related to Gun South, Inc. (GSI):

1988/1989: GSI was also importing semi-auto Steyr AUG-SA rifles (which had been approved for sporting use by the ATF), but were held/confiscated at the airport by the U.S. Customs Service due to a 1989 Office of National Drug Policy temporary suspension of the import of the Steyr AUG and four other rifles. The ATF also seemingly screwed them over: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/877/858/270195/

1991 - We learn here that at some point the government gave the rifles back to GSI and allowed them to sell the rifles to law enforcement and military agencies, since civilian sale had been recently banned. This is likely how a lot of these guns made it to random SWAT teams and other agencies in the U.S. — However, this case is actually from many years later, when a 1991 National Guard captain (Nevius) was acquiring these guns from GSI and then immediately reselling them to an FFL (F.J. Vollmer) for profit. https://casetext.com/case/us-v-fj-vollmer-co-inc

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Original post: I keep hearing anecdotally that ICE agents at one point were issued Steyr AUG’s before they too were replaced by the M4.

Even Wikipedia makes a super brief mention of it, but its only source is the now defunct and very-reputable-sounding website “riflesnguns.com”. Wikipedia provides a link to an archived version of the site (I’ll link it in the comments) but I’m struggling to find anything on there besides a couple cool pictures of the gun.

Aaaand….that’s the most I’ve been able to find on the topic. There is no mention of it seemingly anywhere, let alone evidence or photos. Who were issued these in ICE? Was it HSI agents, ERO agents? I’m beginning to wonder if this even happened lol