Alongside President Trump’s increased deployment of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since the beginning of his second administration, ICE has begun advertising across media platforms such as Spotify, HBO Max and Pandora Music & Radio. Their advertisements have been highly controversial, with the platforms that air ICE’s ads receiving backlash from consumers.
In 2026, ICE has been active across the country, most notably in Minnesota, looking to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. They have faced criticism for their use of physical, and sometimes fatal, force as well as for arresting and deporting families and children.
Some see ICE’s advertisements as glorifying the idea of deportation. “[ICE is] doing these awful things to people, and they’re saying, ‘Come serve your country and remove these people.’ [This is] going to affect a generation of younger people who see this who don’t really know what’s going on,” Sam Lavallee ’29 said. “[ICE advertisements] could lead you to believe, ‘Oh, this is a good thing that’s happening.’”
ICE recruitment ads for potential ICE officers use phrases such as “Defend the homeland” and “America needs you.” Some feature images of officers in military attire or of Trump saluting.
Recently, ICE has begun to offer a $50,000 signing bonus for new recruits. “I just understand [ICE ads] as an extension of the expansion of ICE in the [Trump] administration,” said Charisse Wu, history teacher and class of 2026 grade dean. “[There are] huge recruitment efforts that have gone into ensuring that that kind of militarized presence is possible.”
According to History Department Chair Josie Rodberg, military advertisements like ICE’s have had cultural significance in the history of the United States. Rodberg pointed to advertisements from World War II featuring Rosie the Riveter, a character encouraging women to fill in for men’s jobs when they went to war; and Uncle Sam, a personification of white, Christian America used for military recruitment. “Some of those ads have become sources of American pride,” Rodberg said.
Some see parallels between the patriotic rhetoric that the U.S. military has used in the past and ICE’s current ideology. “We have all of these [historical] wartime examples of propaganda, demonizing the enemy and recruiting people [by saying] this is the patriotic call,” history teacher Karl Daum said.
While ICE is not a part of the military, some aspects of their ads are violent. For example, many ICE ads feature violence in montage style, set to music. “There’s a level of glamorizing that I’ve heard is happening with the ads and [which is] celebrating the physical power of ICE,” Rodberg said.
According to history teacher Guy Leavitt, the current wave of ICE advertisements is not the first example of anti-immigrant government messaging. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States on the premise that Chinese immigrants were harming the country. Posters promoting the Chinese Exclusion act included stereotypical images of Chinese people.
“The United States has framed at least some immigrants as dangerous threats to economic stability, social order and safety, cultural cohesion, and national security,” Leavitt wrote in an email interview. “The whole history of immigration control helps us to understand ICE’s propaganda because it relies on the same tropes: non-white immigrants as dangerous to the social fabric of America, as carriers of disease, as criminals, as part of an invasion — as if they belonged to a foreign army.”
Many of ICE’s ads appear on social media or other online platforms, allowing them to reach more people than physical advertisements. “[ICE’s ideology] used to be fringe, and now it’s mainstream or normalized,” Daum said. “I think social media has amplified what used to be fringe to such a degree that what we are reacting to is a culture shock of being exposed to what has always existed.”
ICE’s recent advertising campaign may speak to a broader rising nationalism in American culture and politics. “People who are angry about ICE and what ICE is doing are very angry about these ads. [For] people who support what ICE is doing, … those ads are speaking to something that resonates for them about power, about what they think it means to be an American,” Rodberg said. “The ads are polarizing in the same way that all of ICE is.”