ICE Architect Madison Sheahan Shakes Up Ohio Race, Targets Kaptur’s Legacy

Paul Riverbank, 1/16/2026ICE veteran Madison Sheahan takes on Marcy Kaptur, energizing Ohio's fierce, toss-up congressional race.

Sheahan’s leap into the Ohio congressional race didn’t arrive quietly. Her campaign video, filmed on her family farm with a flock of chickens and a freshly washed tractor barely out of frame, wasted little time. “No Excuses. Let’s Get It Done,” she declares, staring straight into the camera, sleeves already rolled up. Whether the slogan sticks remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt about where she stands.

The heart of Sheahan’s pitch: she says she was “a key architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.” She credits herself for hiring a fresh swarm of ICE officers—12,000 by her team’s count—and overseeing what she claims were more than 2.5 million deportations during her single year at the agency’s upper levels. Those are headline-grabbing numbers, and whether or not they stand up to close scrutiny, it’s clear her time in Washington left its mark.

The Washington transition was, by her own telling, abrupt. Before her ICE stint, she was managing wildlife in Louisiana, steering a sprawling agency budget, then backstopping Kristi Noem as a political director before landing on Noem’s staff at Homeland Security. The run from rural Ohio to the inner workings of immigration policy is the sort of career arc that takes most a decade—she made the leap in five.

Backing from Noem, who is known in some circles for both sharp elbows and sharper endorsements, wasn’t slow in coming. “A terrific leader… the American people’s mandate… a great defender of freedom,” Noem said, ticking through the sort of lines you hear in press conferences, though by all accounts Noem’s support is less routine and more personal in this case.

If you talk to old friends around Curtice, or read between the lines in Sheahan’s messaging, you’ll catch the farm story woven in again and again. She talks about mornings feeding animals before sunrise, and a kind of toughness she says she wants to haul into Congress.

But what does all this get her in a district where politics are getting rougher every cycle? The 9th is no longer Marcy Kaptur’s personal territory; after holding off a GOP challenge in 2024 by the narrowest of margins, Kaptur, now the longest-serving woman in the House, is running against an electoral map that’s been nudged rightward, sometimes sharply. The Cook Political Report has nudged this one into the “Toss Up” column—just on the edge of “Lean Republican”—signaling that what once looked like a long shot for the GOP is now a winnable prize.

Kaptur, for her part, isn’t giving up ground. She’s spent four decades walking union halls in Toledo, cutting ribbons at small-town parades, and seeing her share of what former aides call “knife fights with the budget.” It’s likely she’ll lean on that reputation for grit as she faces off against the brash newcomer with a resume that, for all its accomplishments, is light on roots.

Sheahan is betting that her pathway through Washington, her family-farm drawl, and her willingness to repeat “Trump” early and often will get her across the finish line. “President Trump deserves a Congress that stands firmly behind his agenda,” she told supporters last week, “and Ohio deserves someone who’ll make America safer, more affordable, and more prosperous.”

Plenty of locals, however, remember Kaptur’s years in office—her name in the local paper, the town halls, the phone calls returned. Whether loyalty runs deeper than the appetite for change remains a key question.

Polling is limited, chatter is only beginning, and other Republicans may yet enter the fray. But Madison Sheahan’s campaign—framed as both a nod to her outsider credentials and a shot at the political establishment—has transformed a once-sleepy race into one to watch. For voters in northern Ohio, the next year promises to be anything but dull.

Madison Sheahan finished packing up her desk at ICE just hours before sunrise on a chilly Thursday and pointed her car north, back to the windswept farm fields where she grew up in Curtice, Ohio. At 28, Sheahan has already racked up a list of government jobs that might leave some seasoned Washington hands blinking. But as she kicked off her campaign to unseat Marcy Kaptur—a name that’s practically a household word across northern Ohio—Sheahan’s team seemed determined to paint her as anything but a political rookie.Sheahan’s leap into the Ohio congressional race didn’t arrive quietly. Her campaign video, filmed on her family farm with a flock of chickens and a freshly washed tractor barely out of frame, wasted little time. “No Excuses. Let’s Get It Done,” she declares, staring straight into the camera, sleeves already rolled up. Whether the slogan sticks remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt about where she stands.The heart of Sheahan’s pitch: she says she was “a key architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.” She credits herself for hiring a fresh swarm of ICE officers—12,000 by her team’s count—and overseeing what she claims were more than 2.5 million deportations during her single year at the agency’s upper levels. Those are headline-grabbing numbers, and whether or not they stand up to close scrutiny, it’s clear her time in Washington left its mark.The Washington transition was, by her own telling, abrupt. Before her ICE stint, she was managing wildlife in Louisiana, steering a sprawling agency budget, then backstopping Kristi Noem as a political director before landing on Noem’s staff at Homeland Security. The run from rural Ohio to the inner workings of immigration policy is the sort of career arc that takes most a decade—she made the leap in five.Backing from Noem, who is known in some circles for both sharp elbows and sharper endorsements, wasn’t slow in coming. “A terrific leader… the American people’s mandate… a great defender of freedom,” Noem said, ticking through the sort of lines you hear in press conferences, though by all accounts Noem’s support is less routine and more personal in this case.If you talk to old friends around Curtice, or read between the lines in Sheahan’s messaging, you’ll catch the farm story woven in again and again. She talks about mornings feeding animals before sunrise, and a kind of toughness she says she wants to haul into Congress.But what does all this get her in a district where politics are getting rougher every cycle? The 9th is no longer Marcy Kaptur’s personal territory; after holding off a GOP challenge in 2024 by the narrowest of margins, Kaptur, now the longest-serving woman in the House, is running against an electoral map that’s been nudged rightward, sometimes sharply. The Cook Political Report has nudged this one into the “Toss Up” column—just on the edge of “Lean Republican”—signaling that what once looked like a long shot for the GOP is now a winnable prize.Kaptur, for her part, isn’t giving up ground. She’s spent four decades walking union halls in Toledo, cutting ribbons at small-town parades, and seeing her share of what former aides call “knife fights with the budget.” It’s likely she’ll lean on that reputation for grit as she faces off against the brash newcomer with a resume that, for all its accomplishments, is light on roots.Sheahan is betting that her pathway through Washington, her family-farm drawl, and her willingness to repeat “Trump” early and often will get her across the finish line. “President Trump deserves a Congress that stands firmly behind his agenda,” she told supporters last week, “and Ohio deserves someone who’ll make America safer, more affordable, and more prosperous.”Plenty of locals, however, remember Kaptur’s years in office—her name in the local paper, the town halls, the phone calls returned. Whether loyalty runs deeper than the appetite for change remains a key question.Polling is limited, chatter is only beginning, and other Republicans may yet enter the fray. But Madison Sheahan’s campaign—framed as both a nod to her outsider credentials and a shot at the political establishment—has transformed a once-sleepy race into one to watch. For voters in northern Ohio, the next year promises to be anything but dull.