ICE Spending Big on Ads Despite Government Shutdown

Even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed, thousands are laid off, and SNAP runs out of funding amid the government shutdown, the Trump administration has continued to spend big (upwards of $10 million) on ICE recruitment and Department of Homeland Security ads encouraging self-deportation.

In just the first three weeks of the government shutdown, ICE spent $4.5 million of taxpayer dollars to run recruitment ads, while DHS spent more than $5.3 million on ads encouraging self-deportation and praising President Donald Trump, according to new advertisement tracking information from Equis and Priorities USA.

“We’re seeing that some of these campaigns have actively started during October, clearly after the shutdown started, which is key to this story,” Natalia Campos Vargas, the deputy research director for messaging at Equis, tells Rolling Stone. “During the government shutdown where employees are being furloughed, these government entities are still spending millions of dollars on advertising on TV and digital platforms.”

According to the new memo, which looks into ad spending on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, Google, Snapchat, X, cable TV, and broadcast TV, the government even increased ad spending during the shutdown. Specifically, DHS increased spending on YouTube ads, going up from $292,000 alone in September to $332,000 in just the first three weeks of October.

The ICE ads specifically target recruitment in sanctuary cities like Seattle, Boston, and Chicago, pushing a $50,000 signing bonus to police officers as part of funding authorized in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill to focus on immigration enforcement. “You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city, safe,” the narrator says in some advertisements targeting local police officers. “But in sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free.”

In a statement to Rolling Stone, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that the funding came from this bill, and that “hiring law enforcement officers is mission critical in order to fix the crisis the Biden administration manufactured by letting millions of criminal illegal aliens come into the country… Nothing will slow us down from recruiting more officers.”

McLaughlin also said in her statement that Trump and DHS Sec. Kristi Noem “will always stand by law enforcement” and are making sure they are paid during the shutdown.

DHS ads seem to target those with interests associated with the Latino community, according to the Equis research. What’s most striking is that on Meta platforms, Instagram, and Facebook, DHS has used “interest targeting” to focus on audiences interested in topics such as Latin music, Mexican cuisine, Mexican soccer teams, and Mexican pop music. It’s also unclear how much the government is spending on advertising outside of. the country.

“We are not able to track money spent outside of the United States, but we do know that the DHS is also running ads in Mexico,” says Campos Vargas. “We don’t know how much money is spent or where it is being spent.”

Last week, Rolling Stone reported that numerous streaming services and platforms — from Max and Pandora to Univision and Spotify — were running ICE recruitment ads and pro-self-deportation ads on their services. Earlier this week, the Indivisible Project launched a campaign to encourage folks to cancel Spotify Premium subscriptions and protest the platform over its running of ICE ads. It promoted said boycott on Instagram and YouTube, which has also run similar advertising.

“Spotify is exploiting the work of artists to line their pockets while recruiting for ICE – a secret police force that is terrorizing American communities,” Ezra Levin, the organization’s co-founder, said in a press release. “Spotify is actively amplifying the Trump regime’s drive to authoritarianism.”

A spokesperson for the music platform iterated to Rolling Stone that the ad is “part of a wider campaign from the U.S. government running across multiple platforms.” It’s true: similar ads have been seen on Spanish-language television, digital radio stations, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other services, and follows the Trump administration’s investment of $30 billion to hire at least 10,000 more deportation officers by the end of the year, according to The Associated Press.

When reached for comment earlier this month, McLaughlin told Rolling Stone that there was “nothing offensive or partisan” with removing what it called criminals from the United States. “The ICE recruitment campaign is a resounding success with more than 150,000 applications rolling in from patriotic Americans answering the call to defend the Homeland by helping arrest and remove the worst of the worst from our country,” McLaughlin said at the time.

The Trump administration has been spending big on its immigration agenda since Trump retook office — despite the administration’s hand-wringing over wasteful government spending. Rolling Stone reported in February that the administration had budgeted $200 million to spend on anti-immigrant ads thanking Trump for “securing the border.” Noem said the ad campaign was Trump’s idea. ICE later spent half a million dollars on tricked-out truck’s for a hype video posted to social media. The department’s recruitment blitz doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon, even as much the rest of the federal government’s operations grind to a halt amid the shutdown.