Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is fronting the year’s most expensive political ad campaign, a $51 million blitz thanking President Donald Trump for his border policies, according to AdImpact.
Her Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its high-priority armed raids on migrants around the country, has spent more than any political campaign on ads this year.
And the DHS insists the ads are not political but a public service announcement.
The ads feature Noem, who was given the moniker “ICE Barbie” for her love of dolling up in publicity stunts pushing the U.S. crackdown on migrants. She speaks directly to the camera, thanking Trump for “securing our border and putting America first” and urging undocumented immigrants to “leave now.”
Across all the ads, “President Trump” is the most mentioned phrase, according to Axios.
DHS denied that the ads are political. “[T]his isn’t a political ad—this is a public service announcement urging illegal aliens to leave,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Axios.
Trump has vowed during his presidency to deport “millions” of immigrants in what he claims will be the largest mass deportation in American history.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS for additional comment.
The next costliest ad campaign is California’s $41 million redistricting measure. Meanwhile, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger in Virginia has so far spent about $35 million.
The $51 million ad push is part of a broader $200 million contract DHS awarded in February to firms People Who Think and Safe America Media. The department cited an “unusual and compelling urgency” to award the contract, according to Axios.
ICE raids during Trump’s second term in the White House have sparked protests nationwide and triggered the administration to deploy National Guard units despite pushback from local officials. The White House has defended the president’s actions, saying the deployments are part of a broader effort to crack down on crime and lawlessness.
John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, told Politico in an interview published Tuesday that ICE agents are “under tremendous pressure.”
“They’ve been under a lot of pressure to ratchet up the number of arrests. They’ve been forced to adopt some of these more aggressive tactics, because the [Trump] administration seems more interested in the quantity of people arrested, more so than the quality,” said Sandweg.
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